Author's posts
Why experience and skills are not enough
Experience and skills are not enough to assure the highest levels of success and sustainability with improvement initiatives in healthcare. The reason this is true has to do with … quicksand. When I was a kid, quicksand seemed to show up in movie…
Psychological safety in health care: simple, important, fragile
With the epidemic in health care of overwork, stress, and burnout, psychological safety is a crucial factor in achieving the highest levels of quality of care and quality of work environment. While simple in concept, psychological safety is also quite …
Here’s why health care innovations stay secret
Having been an improvement advisor with many quality improvement initiatives and collaboratives, I have observed that stories about successful initiatives too often leave out major relational barriers that got in the way as well as the critical interve…
Beware of the potential harms of trust: 5 safeguards
While “trust” sounds like it would be an inherently good thing to have between two people or in a team, that is not always the case. Depending on what “trust” means to you, it can also be harmful at times. While it may not at first seem pertinent, driv…
Are you leading from reactivity or creativity? 4 steps to see your blind spots.
I discovered one of the most important leadership challenges in my first leadership position supervising a staff of doctors and nurses at a hospital: Being able to see our own contribution to problems. I was confident, having been hired because of my s…
