PESummit Day 1 – Empathy is Hot in Cleveland

With the mercury hitting an incredible 90+ in downtown Cleveland, it was only fitting that the speakers and attendees at the 2018 Patient Experience: Empathy and Innovation Summit (#PESummit) turned up the heat on the passion for more empathy in healthcare WITHOUT a corresponding increase in burnout.

Day 1 at PESummit kicked off with Cleveland Clinic’s dynamic duo of Adrienne Boissy @boissyad, Chief Experience Officer and K. Kelly Hancock @kkellyhancock, Executive Chief Nursing Officer. Boissy issued a challenge to the audience in her opening:

They were followed by Cleveland Clinic President and CEO, Tomislav Mihaljevic MD @TomMihaljevicMD who shared a number of things that we could each do to increase empathy in our daily work. The clear favorite was eating lunch with someone you don’t know, and get to know them:


But the most poignant part of Mihaljevic’s time on stage came when he shared a failure from his past – the time he lost a patient in the OR. He spoke about how he and his team was unable to repair the damage to a patient’s heart and how devastated the team was when despite their best effort, the patient died. As the leader Mihaljevic held himself accountable and not only did he have to support the patient’s family in dealing with their loss, he had to help his own team deal with the death as well.

It was a pleasant surprise to hear Mihaljevic talk about the feelings he had in the moment and how he learned lessons that he carries with him today.

The highlight of the breakout sessions was the panel discussion on “When Patient and Healthcare Innovation Meet” that featured Grace Cordovano @GraceCordovano, Julie Rish @julie_rish, Christine Traul MD @traulc and Michael Seres @mjseres.


My favorite was Cordovano’s tip for patients to go into the doctor appointments PREPARED – with questions they are seeking answers to.

Day 1 ended with Thomas H Lee MD @ThomasHLeeMD, CMO of Press Ganey talking about “grit” (aka resilience) at the individual and team levels.


Lee’s most provocative statement was when he cited his research that found that it is ineffective to use financial incentives to motivate behavior that is inherently non-financial in nature. This punched a hole through the concept of paying people to sleep more than 7 hours that was mentioned by one of the morning keynotes and other gamification techniques that have become popular over the past few years.

Day 1 at PESummit was fantastic and I’m looking forward to a equally great Day 2. Follow along on Twitter #PESummit

 

 

 

 

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

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