This episode of Vital Conversations features Dr. Steve Kravet, president of Johns Hopkins Community Physicians (JHCP), who discusses the organization’s growth and innovative strategies to enhance clinician well-being and retention. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

In this episode, Dr. April Saathoff, Vice President and Chief Nursing Information Officer at the Johns Hopkins Health System, shares how technology is enhancing patient care, streamlining documentation and making nursing care more efficient and fulfilling. The conversation highlights virtual nursing and its potential for organizations to retain highly trained nurses, extend careers in meaningful ways, offer flexible schedules, and support nurse well-being. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Join a conversation with Dr. Carolyn Cumpsty Fowler, JHHS Executive Director for Nurse Well-Being and Dr. Cassie O'Malley, Senior Director of Well-being and Innovation, MedStar Health, on how healthcare leaders can create supportive environments that foster inter-disciplinary team well-being. The two nursing and well-being leaders offer practical advice on how to balance operational demands with the need for human connection, and enhance interprofessional collaboration. They also discuss the importance of modeling sustainable self-care. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Dr. Jennifer Katzenstein, a board-certified pediatric neuropsychologist at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, shares how her team supports both patients and healthcare professionals, especially in the wake of repeated natural disasters in St. Petersburg, Florida. She introduces the concept of “work-life rhythm,” discusses innovative staff retention strategies, and highlights how the team has adapted the Johns Hopkins MESH (Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health) Collaborative for All Children’s. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Across large healthcare systems, the unexpected death of a colleague can be disruptively sad, but isn’t necessarily an uncommon event. Join a conversation between Jonathan Ripp and Lee Biddison on coordinating support for team members who have experienced the loss of a colleague. They discuss the importance of timely and compassionate communication, and the two chief wellness officers share elements of their institutional protocols for supporting students, faculty and staff members affected by loss. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

We welcome Deborah Baker, senior vice president for nursing and chief nurse executive for the Johns Hopkins Health System, to the podcast. Under her leadership, Johns Hopkins Nursing set well-being as a strategic priority to ensure continued focus and investment on nurse and team member well-being. Dr. Baker shares how her understanding of well-being has shifted over her career as a nurse leader, the value she places on listening, and ways Johns Hopkins is supporting nurse managers Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

The volume of electronic messages and time spent in the EHR has increased exponentially and is widely recognized as a contributor to healthcare worker burnout. Learn about Johns Hopkins Medicine’s “Great 8” Epic training and provider support initiative and other programs at Johns Hopkins to work easier and restore work-life balance. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Dr. Kelvin Hong, Executive Vice Chair of Radiology, shares the experience of the Department of Radiology, a large department at Johns Hopkins with a range of well-being needs. Learn about how they are investing in well-being, how they view outcomes measurement and ROI, and their multi-pronged approach to elevate well-being as a foundational issue.
1) Departments should be proactively investing in well-being. We know the cost of turnover and recruitment, so let’s get ahead of it by investing in strategies that mitigate burnout and promote fulfillment and well-being. A key component of this effort is assigning leadership of well-being to someone with decision and budget authority.
2) In healthcare, our goal is to be evidenced-based in everything we do, so why don’t we treat well-being the same way? We should be investing in well-being training within our departments and bringing in experts to guide us in implementing proven strategies.
3) There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for promoting well-being, across departments, between divisions, and among teams. Allowing individual teams to decide how to spend their budgets, based on what matters most to them, supports autonomy and agency which we know is connected to well-being.
4) We know well-being impacts our experiences at work and in life, but the impact of well-being initiatives may take a while to show in our survey results. So, stay the course, because good things take time.
Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Join a conversation with Corey Feist, CEO of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, about the national movement to reform clinician licensing and credentialing by removing stigmatizing questions about seeking mental health support. The conversation highlights the need to recognize that health care workers are people, too. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Employers increasingly recognize the positive impact of mindfulness, but how can it be practiced in a busy health care setting? Join a conversation with Jennifer Salaverri, a licensed clinical social worker and mindfulness meditation teacher who leads the mindfulness strategy for Johns Hopkins Health System employees. Salaverri explains how mindfulness practices can improve workplace relationships, patient care and work-life balance. Learn practical ways to incorporate mindfulness into daily routines and the importance of self-compassion for health care workers. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

In this episode of Vital Conversations, Carolyn Carpenter, president of the National Capital Region (NCR) for the Johns Hopkins Health System (JHHS) describes her relational leadership approach, built from 33 years in health care. She offers advice for leaders who might be initially uncomfortable with this approach, and gives practical tips for how a busy health care CEO can incorporate it into their leadership practice.
Access the podcast here. Have an idea for a podcast? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Resilience in Stressful Events (RISE) is a peer responder program that supports health care workers who have emotional distress due to difficult care-related events. Developed in 2010 at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, RISE has been replicated by hospitals and health systems globally. In this episode, two of RISE’s founders — Cheryl Connors and Matt Norvell — talk about how RISE was developed, how it is run and what health care leaders should consider when creating a peer-support program.
Resources:
RISE internal link for the Johns Hopkins Medicine community livejohnshopkins.sharepoint.com/sites/inside-rise/SitePages/home.aspx
Caring for the Caregiver program hopkinsmedicine.org/armstrong-institute/training-services/caring-for-the-caregiver

We welcome Rich Safeer, our colleague in the Office of Well-Being. Rich leads the Healthy at Hopkins employee health and well-being strategy for Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM). In this episode, the JHM well-being leadership team engages in conversation around culture--a key component to achieve work place well-being. The team offers example interventions that leaders and managers can use to support a culture of well-being, including defining healthy norms, peer support and the responsibility of the organization to help make the healthy choice the easy choice. Access the podcast here. Have an idea for an episode? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

Most clinicians know that depression, anxiety and other mood disorders are treatable conditions. Unfortunately, clinicians often face barriers when accessing care for themselves. To better understand why, we welcome Dr. Karen Swartz, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins to the podcast. Learn how depression or other mental health conditions may present in clinicians, why these may pose a challenge to care seeking, and what colleagues and health care leaders can do to make treatment more accessible.
Take-aways:

* An estimated 1/3 of clinicians are not getting preventive screenings or primary care. 
* We need to make it easy for clinicians to access care. Two strategies for organizations are: (1) offering confidential, high-quality mental health care on campus and at convenient hours, and (2) training supervisors to recognize when someone is suffering. 
* We all need time to rest, so we have the energy to do our best work and to enjoy life. Leaders and clinical supervisors should consider how they are protecting clinicians who often have long hours and take work home.
* When we notice that someone is suffering, we have an obligation to support their ability to access care. Treatment for depression and other mood disorders works.

Manisha Loss, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer at Johns Hopkins, joins the podcast to talk about promising artificial intelligence interventions happening at Johns Hopkins. Learn how new innovations in health IT can bring us closer together, improving the provider-patient relationship. In this episode of Vital Conversations, Dr. Loss shares what we are learning about digital scribes, in-basket triage and auto-draft message responses, and how these technologies can positively impact the well-being of our workforce. 

Access the podcast here. Have an idea for an episode? Email owb@jhmi.edu.

In this episode, Kim Peairs joins us to discuss the role of the medication access pharmacy technician, a promising approach to tackling prior authorizations in primary care being piloted at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Peairs walks us through this team-based intervention in which matching the right skill set for the job can lead to efficiencies, engagement and meaning in work for all members of the team.

Delivering health care is high stakes, but we too often don’t protect our attention and let in too many distractions. In this podcast, Liz Harry, Chief Well-Being Officer at Michigan Medicine, argues that we make things harder by enabling systems that add to our cognitive load. Dr. Harry helps us understand how cognitive load affects clinical care, gives tips on reducing our load and describes what a true cognitive break looks like. To learn more visit https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/office-of-well-being/podcast  

Takeaways:

* Overload is associated with burnout, and our risk of overload increases as the amount of data coming at us increases.
* Organizations seeking to address burnout can look at interventions that affect extrinsic load, such as instituting standardization, reducing redundancy and ensuring that clinicians are not forced to split their attention.
* It’s important to be patient with our early career doctors, nurses and other clinicians, who are experiencing especially heavy cognitive load because they are building new mental models while gaining experience.
* Cognitive overload shows up in our work and in our home lives. Practical tips for reducing cognitive load: Standardize and set routines, protect our attention by limiting interruptions and prioritize focused attention on the things and people that matter most.

Has the complexity of our work in health care outpaced our brain’s ability to keep up? Liz Harry, Chief Well-Being Officer at Michigan Medicine, discusses the connection between cognitive load and burnout, and introduces the concept of the attention economy. Dr. Harry shares strategies for leveraging technology while supporting our well-being, as well as some personal tips for protecting what has become a scarce resource — our focused attention. To learn more visit https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/office-of-well-being/podcast

Key Takeaways:

* Solving for burnout at the organizational level can feel overwhelming. Let’s not go it alone. We can learn from each other within health care and also from disciplines outside of health care. We need not only an individual growth mindset, but a collective growth mindset across health care.
* We now live in an attention economy — our attention is a scarce and valuable resource. We need to be intentional about where we choose to place our focused energy.
* As we lean into the power of AI, it’s important to consider how the technology is contributing to our well-being. Is AI reducing the number of clicks, steps or human interactions needed to complete a given task? In doing so, is it freeing up cognitive bandwidth for complex medical decision-making?

Resources:

* nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01833-z
* ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve
* App for time sucks: opal.so

Most of us know what it feels like when our well-being at work is compromised. But do we know how we got there? Is it just that it’s been a tough week or we didn’t have time for yoga, or is there something much deeper about working in health care at play? Today, we’ll take our first look at the things that really influence our well-being at work. To learn more visit https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/office-of-well-being/podcast

Takeaways:

* Self-care is important for well-being, but focusing on individual behaviors will never be enough to improve our well-being at work.
* Because well-being is foundational to our ability to achieve what we care about (safety, quality, professional fulfillment, etc.), we must prioritize it.
* As with anything we care about, there are few quick fixes, but we do have guidelines and an emerging evidence base to help us move forward. We need to lean into a growth mindset, pace ourselves and realize that good things take time.