Menders: Love & Leadership in Health Systems

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Pay attention to the personal and organizational factors that erode well-being, drive burnout, and make strategic changes to nourish yourself and your team.“I’ve finally found my passion!” Not every day, my patients walk into my office smiling, but it’s delightful when it happens. I’d been working with this guy for a while, focusing on mindful self-awareness and kicking his people-pleasing habit. I never intended to help him find his passion, but it happened when he began paying attention to what was genuinely fulfilling.

Addressing burnout requires that we toggle between the personal and the organizational. Paying attention to what is fulfilling and deeply meaningful to you and me while at the same time working to address barriers to equitable distribution of workload, leadership practices that erode trust, and challenges that interfere with building community at the team level.

The way we’re working isn’t working. So how do we step out of the frame and change how we work to create a system nourishing for us and everyone in our healthcare organizations?

Tune in to learn:

What simple changes will help you realign with your passion for medicine
What questions to ask to transform your experience as a healer
How to help your team reconnect with passion every day

Bio: Adele Wang is an integrative health provider who also mentors professional people struggling with anxiety and physical manifestations of stress. In her current practice, she focuses on helping healthcare providers realign themselves with their passions in life and medicine. Adele is also the host of the All Things Human podcast.

Are you motivated to improve employee engagement and the financial health of your department or healthcare system?

Join me for acomplimentary Employee Engagement Strategy Session (https://forms.office.com/r/ZM6Q4h7q9k). We'll review your employee engagement challenges, strategize how to rebuild psychological safety and design an action plan that will maximize impact in areas you can control.

Contact me (dr.nicoladepaul@mendinghealthsystems.com) if you have questions or want additional details about this free Strategy Session. And keep in mind… just a few seats are available each month!

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Bonus:

If you’re doing the internal work to transform yourself as a leader to maximize your impact on your healthcare system – I want something more for you. That is precisely why I got into working with healthcare leaders and leadership teams in the first place.

Join me for acomplimentaryLeadership Strategy Session (https://forms.office.com/r/ZM6Q4h7q9k) where you’ll have a chance to consider your values and develop a strategy to realign your actions with your core values.

Contact me (dr.nicoladepaul@mendinghealthsystems.com) if you have questions or want additional details about this free Strategy Session. And keep in mind…because of the very special nature of this mindfulness-based work, just a few seats are available each month!

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If you’re a woman in leadership struggling to prioritize yourself, try Intuitive Eating as a first step to honoring yourself.

You can't be the woman in leadership your people need you to be without prioritizing self-care.

One of the things that women leaders mention is the difficulty they have prioritizing taking time for themselves, especially when that is not being encouraged in their work environment. Leaders (especially women) feel time pressured as they balance the many needs of everybody else: their organization, employees, and family. In this busy context, self-care can feel unimportant.

Victoria and I discussed how the difficulty prioritizing self-care applies to women's relationships with food and their bodies.

You can learn to nourish yourself and your body as you care for yourself, both as, just as humans, as women, as women in leadership, or just as women in healthcare.

Prioritizing yourself can feel selfish, so you may sometimes feel guilty for making yourself a priority. But as Victoria points out, this all-or-nothing mindset of self-denial and service to others is exhausting and problematic. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.

Listen to learn:

The fundamentals of the intuitive eating framework
How intuitive eating relates to self-care principles
Why diet culture is so harmful to women and the health of the body
How to prioritize time for yourself when you are incredibly busy
Why prioritizing pleasure is healthy for the body
How self-awareness will reduce your risk of burnout

Watch a clip on YouTube

Read more on my blog

Bio: Victoria Yates is a registered nurse, and an intuitive eating coach focused on helping women with issues surrounding food and their bodies. Victoria cares about helping women to care for and nourish themselves and develop more calm confidence with who they are and their approach to caring for themselves and their bodies. You can find her at victoria-yates.com.

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Lead with self-awareness and mindfulness to keep your leadership presence in difficult times.

As a psychologist, much of my time is spent teaching people how to regulate their emotions. You could call this skill learning how to manage stress, distress tolerance, or create breathing space under pressure.

Leaders need three skills to stay calm and maintain leadership presence in difficult situations.

Mindful emotional awareness
Flexible thinking
Values-aligned action

I use these skills to calm my out-of-control emotional response when my preschooler is obnoxious, with a challenging patient, and when I give or receive difficult feedback. These are also foundational skills for effective leadership.

Transformational leaders are connected to their own emotional experiences and have the emotional capacity to connect with and acknowledge their team members’ emotions too.

Miracle Laurie May and I discussed how leaders could use mindful emotional awareness to stay present and lead people by example during challenging moments.

Listen to find out:

The five A's of Mindful Awareness
How mindfulness helps leaders to lead by example
Why mindfulness and meditation aren't the same
How mindfulness practice can help elevate your leadership skills

Read more at my blog:

Bio: Miracle Laurie May is a mindfulness coach who works with leaders motivated to prioritize joy, integrity, and equanimity in their daily lives. You can learn more about her work and find her at Have Zen Will Travel.

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Leaders Are Trained Not Born.
It is time to include leadership development as a core component of healthcare training.

Our trainees may have innate leadership skills and qualities, but leadership can also be taught. And as we work to create institutions that reflect our communities, we must equip trainees from diverse backgrounds with the leadership skills our organizations need.

Your trainees and up-and-coming leaders in your organization will benefit from learning to appreciate how their strengths and unique attributes help them to become leaders. And your trainees will learn the most in a warm environment where you and your team provide mentoring, encouragement, and supported experiences in learning to apply themselves in leadership roles.

Listen to find out:

Why modeling is so powerful as a leadership training tool
Why leadership is a value and not just a role
How to create developmental experiences for faculty and trainees
How you can equip future leaders to rise into formal and informal leadership positions

Dr. Nicole Torrence is a training director for a psychology pre-doctoral internship training program in a public sector healthcare system.

Leadership Strategy Session: https://forms.office.com/r/ZM6Q4h7q9k

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Address structural bias to elevate underrepresented employees as leaders within healthcare organizations.

There is a representation gap in healthcare leadership. People with diverse identities and historically marginalized tend to be underrepresented in the pool of applicants presenting for executive positions in healthcare organizations.

Many things must change, including the structural elements reinforcing bias and underrepresentation.

Dr. Chamarlyn Fairley and I had the opportunity to explore these ideas in our recent conversation about how to diversify the pipeline to executive leadership positions in healthcare.

Listen to her tips on increasing diversity, reducing bias, and strengthening leadership capacity in your healthcare system:

Increase leadership capacity by developing diverse leaders within your organization.
Reduce bias in your hiring and selection process.
Let go of stereotypes to identify future leaders.
Start with an intentional conversation about why increasing diversity matters to your healthcare system.
Ensure the diversity of your applicant pool is representative of the rich diversity of your community.
Ensure each candidate is discussed for an equal amount of time.

Bio: Dr. Chamarlyn Fairley is a psychologist and consultant to healthcare executive leaders. She is the founder and principal consultant at the Fairley Consulting Group.

Leadership Strategy Session: https://forms.office.com/r/ZM6Q4h7q9k

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Invest in employee engagement. You don’t have to compromise your bottom line to create a healthy workplace.

You can create change in your healthcare organization when your employees have disengaged. It takes persistent effort, but it’s possible. And the time and energy you invest in employee engagement won’t negatively impact your bottom line. Not if you focus your resources on the right things.

Is it possible to re-engage your employees without collapsing your bottom line? Absolutely. Listen to my conversation with Michele Thomson, who has a powerful story about how this is possible. She turned a struggling organization around and transformed employee outcomes on a budget, and you can too.

Listen to find out:

How Michele re-engaged her staff and transformed a toxic workplace culture
How moral injury fits into the conversation about employee engagement
Why you should feel empowered to put your people before patients
What strategies will make the biggest impact on your employee outcomes

Bio: Michelle Thomson is an RN specializing in palliative and end-of-life care. Michele is also a workplace culture consultant and the founder of Curis Consulting. In her consulting role, she works with leaders to promote healthy leadership development and transform unhealthy workplaces into positive cultural spaces.

If you’re on this journey of doing internal work to transform yourself as a leader to maximize your impact on your healthcare system – I want something more for you. That is precisely why I got into working with healthcare leaders and leadership teams in the first place.

Join me for acomplementaryMindfulness-Based Leadership Strategy Session (https://forms.office.com/r/ZM6Q4h7q9k) where you’ll have a chance to consider your values and develop a strategy to realign your actions with your core values.

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Mindful leaders know that forcing mindfulness on their employees won’t solve burnout in healthcare.

There is a common misconception about mindfulness popular with healthcare clinicians and leadership. We have gotten caught up in believing that mindfulness will help us be calmer, nicer, handle stress better, and recover from burnout faster.

Mindfulness is a buzzword, and many hospitals and healthcare systems have adopted mindfulness classes as a primary employee wellness tool.

Seeing mindfulness as one tool is ok, but when healthcare systems get caught up in seeing mindfulness as a fix for their employees, we have a problem.

Listen to learn how to apply mindfulness skills within your healthcare system:

Why mindfulness classes are not a fix for burnout.
How mindfulness can help you shift how you work with and motivate distressed or unhappy employees.
Why seeing mindfulness as a fix for your unhappy employees blinds healthcare systems to the reality of systemic failures that lead to moral injury and burnout.
How leaders can use mindfulness as a leadership tool to engage burnout hotspots successfully.
How leaders can become part of the solution to reduce burnout and promote healing in your healthcare systems.
How mindfulness can help you create a healthy and high-performing healthcare system aligned with the core values of medicine and its employees.

Watch clips from the episode

Read more about how to apply mindfulness as a healthcare leader

Bio: Colleen Camenisch is the Executive Director of the Nevada Physician Wellness Coalition. She works with healthcare leaders to apply a mindfulness-based approach to well-being within their organizations. She is a certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher and Teacher Trainer.

Contact me (dr.nicoladepaul@gmail.com) if you have questions or want additional details about this free Strategy Session. And keep in mind…because of the very special nature of this mindfulness-based work, just a few seats are available each month!

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Engage your Employees by Prioritizing Internal Communication.Carley Trotman is the founder of The CarTam Project. She’s a communication strategist, a cake lover, expat in the South of France. She brings a wealth of experience working with healthcare organizations on organizational communication and internal messaging to promote employee engagement.

Carley started her company to leverage her expertise as an internal communications specialist and employee engagement point person for organizations. Healthcare organizations have a unique opportunity to consider their internal customers (employees). Healthcare has traditionally looked at its external customers (patients and payors) and ignored what it can do to shape employees’ experiences through its messaging intentionally. So, take a moment to let go of the day-to-day business operations of your healthcare organization and consider what you can do to engage and retain your employees from day one of the employee journey.

Carley Trotman has organizational messaging tips that you need to hear!

Listen to find out:

Why thinking about the employee journey is critical
When you need to start messaging your team about big changes
Why quick decisions and last-minute communication contribute to turnover in healthcare
How you can turn around employee engagement by changing your messaging strategy
And why croissants are better in France!

Bio: Carley Trotman is a Communications and Employee Experience specialist. She is the founder of the CarTam project and she is a thoughtful change agent. She is deeply committed to understanding what employees care about - their motivations and the challenges that inhibit their ability to change, as the catalysts for identifying opportunities to strengthen their engagement with the organization.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Becoming a Voice for Change.

Highly trained administrative leaders are becoming more challenging to find. But suppose you're lucky enough to hire someone like Amanda Forrester. In that case, you'll be able to transform your healthcare system by learning to prioritize the well-being of administrative professionals within your healthcare system.

It is easy to forget that clinicians and healthcare leaders are supported by administrative professionals who manage all of the details, from our patients' arrival at our clinics to the behind-the-scenes management of access to care challenges.

Having good administrative support reduces clinician burnout. But administrative staff are often shuffled to the end of the priority list when healthcare systems strategize how to better care for their people. If your admin team is not at the top of your list of people to care for, they should be.

Empower your administrative team to work at the highest level of their ability, and your clinicians will be freed up to work at the highest level of their license. We are all in this together!

Bio: Amanda Forrester is trained in health informatics and healthcare administration. She manages administrative operations for an extensive healthcare system.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Executive leadership that's rooted in clinical values.

Happy Heart Month!

If you're struggling with transitioning from being a clinician to a healthcare executive leader, this episode is for you!

Dr. Letitia Anderson, MD, is a practicing cardiologist and a Chief of Staff. She's been in your shoes, and she knows it is not easy to balance the competing needs of clinicians and senior executives. But her story demonstrates that you can care for your team while keeping your hospital’s financial stability in mind. Listen to her tips and tricks on staying connected to your clinical team while working in the executive suite.

Hear her explain why heart health month helps us to understand the role that health equity plays for every healthcare team member (as people) and not just our patients.

And finally, join the conversation as we dig into hospitals' responsibility to get involved with their community's food bank and healthy food prescription programs.

Bio: Dr. Letitia Anderson, MD, is a practicing cardiologist and the Chief of Staff for the Northern Nevada Medical Center. She is also the incoming governor of the Nevada Chapter of the American College of Cardiology. And she is also the Board Chair for the Northern Nevada Food Bank (one of my favorite organizations to support!)

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Learning as an Inclusive Leader.

If you’ve been wondering how to put your core values into practice and help your healthcare organization transition away from old habits and towards inclusive leadership values. Look no further.

Sarah Bettman shares practical ideas about how to align your healthcare system with deeply rooted diversity, equity, and inclusion values. She will challenge you to understand why it’s not enough to show up in pro-diversity spaces, like your town’s PRIDE parade, or to be a figurehead in your hospital's COVID tent. You must also be willing to learn from and be changed by these spaces.

Sarah Bettman is the principal consultant at Bettman Consulting Group. She works with leaders to develop workplace cultures deeply rooted in the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion that don't have a "check the box" vibe.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Aligning Your Actions with Your Values for Inclusive Leadership

If you’ve been wondering how to put your core values into practice and help your healthcare organization transition away from old habits and towards inclusive leadership values. Look no further.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Lead with Courage to Create Collective Safety.
Courage is something we often ask of ourselves and our employees. To stand up for what's right. To be courageous and outspoken bystanders. To speak up when a mistake is about to happen.

But do we want our employees to have to use courage at work? We think so, but do we?

Or do we need to turn everything we think we know about courage upside down and then rethink the reality of the role courage plays in healthcare organizations?

Listen to find out:

Why leaders who model courage create collective psychological safety
Why you don't want your healthcare employees to need too much courage
How to build courage in yourself!

Bio: Dr. Lucy Houghton is a registered nurse, women's courage researcher, and board-certified wellness coach. She holds a Ph.D. Organizational Leadership & Human Performance and is the founder of Wyld Rootz (https://wyldrootz.com/). She is an award-winning speaker and the author of the Courage Cultivation Theory, the first of its kind specifically focused on how women summon their courage. And she is on a mission to ensure women have the training, tools, and support they need to claim their courage and create the life of their dreams.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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You can reclaim your courage, all you need is a map.
Courage shows up in places of pain, transition, challenge, and uncertainty! And while women are not socialized to be courageous, we are born into spaces that demand courage and leadership.

Did you know that boys keep a steady level of courage as they age, but girls don't? Girls lose their courage (at least for a while) and tend to build it back in middle age.

Let's skip the early loss of courage and follow Dr. Lucy Houghton, Courage Cartographer, as she teaches us how to reclaim our courage as leaders.

Listen to find out:

Why leaders who model courage create collective psychological safety
Why you don't want your healthcare organization to need too much courage
How to build courage in yourself!

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Learning Neuroscience Basics is Essential for Women Leaders.
Neuroscience sounds complex, and it is, but the fundamentals of neuroscience come down to caring for your brain in the simplest ways.

Have you ever stopped to think about how your brain health impacts your ability to do your job as a leader in healthcare? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't.

Take a moment to consider your brain's basic needs (food, water, sleep, rest) and you'll find that caring for your brain creates a healthy platform for growth, networking, learning, and the ability to lead others gracefully.

Listen to find out:

How neuroscience and networking go hand in hand
Why you need to pay attention to your neuroscience needs and create an environment that helps others do the same
How you can create stronger social networks that will help you feel supported in every stage of your career

Bio: Dr. Mary Rensel is a neuroimmunologist and the founder of Brain Fresh (https://www.brainfresh.org/). She is also a productivity guru and keynote speaker focusing on resiliency, burnout, & gender in medicine.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Neuroscience and Networking Go Hand in Hand for Women Leaders.
Neuroscience sounds complex, and it is, but the fundamentals of neuroscience come down to caring for your brain in the simplest ways.

Have you ever stopped to think about how your brain health impacts your ability to do your job as a leader in healthcare? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't.

Listen to find out:

How neuroscience and networking go hand in hand
Why you need to pay attention to your neuroscience needs and create an environment that helps others do the same
How you can create stronger social networks that will help you feel supported in every stage of your career

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Lead with Your Whole Life as a Whole Person and as a Woman.
Self-awareness is the core of effective leadership. And I'm talking about leadership that goes beyond any particular role you may hold. You are a leader in your life as much as you are a leader in your healthcare system.

Women who are aware of their need for boundaries and self-care are better at creating resilient systems that honor the human needs that we all have.

When you live your values and honor yourself daily, you shift the systems we live in and power up the long-term outcomes that your team can accomplish.

Listen to find out:

How having an emotionally intelligent and self-aware leader impacts team outcomes
Why the best leaders focus on managing themselves first
What you can do to help your team identify what is unique about them as you lead

Bio: Dr. Sahana D'Silva is an Integrative Psychiatrist and Transformational Leadership Development Coach. She coaches physicians in effective communication skills and she co-founded Tree of Life Soul-Centered Wellness (https://tolsoulwellness.com/).

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Who You Are Determines Your Team's Outcomes.
Who you are as a whole person contributes to your team's effectiveness and ability to perform at the highest levels. Leaders who care about themselves and their people have a more significant impact on the world.

We can fake it for a while, but long term, we can't fake who we are. And our whole selves need attention. When we're willing to be vulnerable and invest in bringing our whole selves to our leadership responsibilities, we leave an indelible impact on our teams and the world.

Listen to find out:

How having an emotionally intelligent and self-aware leader impacts team outcomes
Why the best leaders focus on managing themselves first
What you can do to help your team identify what is unique about them as you lead

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Self-awareness and respect are the keys to building relationships in healthcare.

Learning to command respect by being yourself is so much more powerful than trying to be someone you're not as a leader.

Let go of the "leadership" persona and learn from Natalie Lamberton as she shares how she has learned to use being herself to model respect for her people. Being yourself empowers your team members to be themselves and allows you to act with intentionality to build resilient teams.

Listen to find out:

Why it's her dream for every person in her hospital to say, "I take care of patients"
What she does to lower the power differential and promote healthy team functioning
How she came to understand the gravity of her words and actions as a CEO

Bio: Natalie Lamberton is the CEO of Denver Springs Behavioral Health Hospital and co-author of The Emerging Leader: A field guide.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Leadership takes courage.

Being a young healthcare CEO is a tough job. But it can be even more challenging (and isolating) for young BIPOC women.

Natalie Lamberton shares the lessons she learned through this experience as a young black female CEO. She found mentors and models who inspired and empowered her to take ownership of this role. And she used grit and courage to find her voice as she learned to fully appreciate the weight of her responsibilities as a healthcare executive.

Listen to find out:

How she connected with mentors who did not share her racial identity
What she does to model respect for people from every discipline in her organization
How you can act with intentionality to identify diverse leaders and empower them within your system
What strategies will help you to retain and develop your people for leadership roles

Bio: Natalie Lamberton is the CEO of Denver Springs Behavioral Health Hospital and co-author of The Emerging Leader: A field guide.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Change the Culture to Sustain Your Team.
Your people are watching you and taking your lead.

But as we all know, change is hard! And prioritizing self-care as a woman in healthcare leadership is not reinforced by our environment.

It's time to create environments that are built for real people.

Join Karla Cauldwell to learn how to make tiny changes to move in a values-aligned direction.

Listen to learn:

Why starting with small goals will take you further as a leader
What Karla finds so motivating about solving problems

Bio: Karla Cauldwell is an author, speaker, podcast host, and Live Your Best Life Coach. She brings her expertise in nursing and whole health education to her work, coaching healthcare leaders to improve their quality of life and model self-care for their teams.

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Take Small Steps to Model Self Care & Sustain Your Team.
Your sustainability as a leader or manager is critical to the well-being and resilience of your team. Don't think your well-being, health behaviors, or self-care routine matters to your team? Think again.

Your people are watching you and taking your lead. When leaders model health boundaries and prioritize self-care, they promote their sustainability and elevate the level of sustainability within their whole team. And healthier clinicians model healthier behaviors for patients, which boosts patients' motivation to make healthy behavior changes. Talk about creating a virtuous cycle of well-being!

Join Karla Cauldwell to learn how to make tiny changes to move in a values-aligned direction.

Listen to learn:

Why Karla loves working with women leaders
How to identify which of your people are ready to make big changes
How you can use your presence to impact your employees' well-being

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Client Spotlight: An Example of How To Create Organizational Well-Being.
Whatever the size or complexity of your organization, I hope that you feel empowered to make small changes to start the process of cultural transformation.

The most effective and lasting changes start with the smallest actions. Take the time to consider what tiny action you can take to transform your team.

And enjoy hearing how Dr. Lauren Beste approached this process. Sometimes slow and steady really is the better approach!

Listen to find out:

What challenges led her to ask for help
Why making an investment in her team's well-being was an easy decision
Why investing in your team's well-being is a worthwhile investment

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Create a Responsive Feedback Cycle.
Congratulations!

You've taken the time to engage, listen, and respond to your employees. Now it is time to ensure that your changes to promote well-being continue making an impact over the long term.

The good news is that your policy changes will pay dividends in employee engagement and workplace satisfaction as long as you pay attention to their impact.

If you stop monitoring policy impacts, you'll risk slipping back into habits that damage well-being.

Commit to a simple feedback process.

A responsive feedback cycle will allow you to gather feedback, make subtle adjustments, and stay the course of organizational well-being.

Listen to find out:

Why feedback cycles require daily attention
How to create sustainable change
How paying attention to your values will keep your organization sustainable

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Empower Your Frontline Employees To Create Change.
It is tempting to push the responsibility for organizational change into employees. And, while they play a vital role in this process, employees can only create change when you lead the way.

So how do you get this right?

Take the time to invest in a systemic response. And then empower your employees with the tools and resources to remove the proverbial pebble in the shoe problems.

Employees can bring their creativity and expertise to solve frontline problems when they feel fully supported by you.

Listen to find out:

Why it is so important to involve your people in making big changes
How you can take frontline complaints and turn them into creative ideas
Why it is important to listen to feedback, even when it's painful

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Align Organizational Policies with Employee Needs & Well-Being.
Okay, you've invested time and energy in listening to your employees. And you're asking, "now what?"

Good news, now it's time for action!

It's time to evaluate your organizational policies and realign them with your employees' needs.

All that listening helped you rebuild relationships with your people. And your willingness to listen reignited their creativity.

So take those creative ideas (hint, some may be disguised as complaints) and use them to your advantage.

Maximizing employees' creative problem-solving will generate cultural shifts and a regenerative employee-centered environment.

Listen to find out:

Why local policies impact employee well-being
What evidence-based principles will help you to align your policies with well-being
How to go beyond lip service to engage in meaningful action as you work to create change

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Commit to a Consistent Listening Rhythm.
Guess what? Communication is tricky. We probably can't get our messaging right every time. But when we show up consistently for our teams ready to listen and provide information, we create a robust communication pathway.

Showing up at regularly scheduled intervals and in consistent ways allows us to build trust. Consistency also helps us to build relationships, hear employees' concerns, and get our messages out even when we show up imperfectly.

Consistency also builds engagement. And it demonstrates our willingness to show up and listen even when what we hear is painful and unpleasant.

Consistent communication between leaders and employees allows employees to feel heard, seen and prioritized as valued members of the healthcare team.

Listen to find out:

How often is often enough to meet with your team
Why imperfect communication is typically better than nothing
How to set the precedent for two-way communication with your team

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Validate Distress & Desires.
Listening is easy, right? You know it's more complicated. Especially when you listen to the perspectives of many people who see things differently.

Taking the time to validate the emotions beneath what you hear will help you to build trust. It also helps establish safety within your team and organizational community.

You don't have to agree with the feedback you hear to offer your kind attention and validation of your people’s emotional experience.

Listen to find out:

Why effective listening involves acknowledging the painful and the positive
How validating people's distress and desires will boost your organization's creativity
Why you'll benefit from taking the time to listen, even when you disagree with the feedback you hear

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Develop a Diverse Listening Toolkit.
Learning to listen to your whole team requires you to create many opportunities for your team to share their experiences and provide feedback.

Don't mistake an annual survey for an adequate communication plan. Build redundancy into your communication with all of your people by creating many different opportunities for two-way feedback.

Your people learn and communicate in different ways. Take the time to build listening processes that promote safety and meet your people's needs to be heard.

Listen to find out:

Why having a variety of listening tools is essential in healthcare
How to improve your ability to listen deeply to your people's challenges
What formal and informal listening tools will help you connect with your whole care team

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Elevate Employees with Diverse Perspectives & Backgrounds.
Teams with more psychological safety make fewer errors and have better communication!

And coming to work is a lot more fun and engaging when you feel safe.

So how do we create psychological safety?

I recommend you identify the team members who have historically had less power and elevate them to the decision-making table. Then give their perspectives the weight they deserve and make changes to help them feel safe and valued.

When the least powerful and least visible among us are genuinely honored and included, our organizations are strengthened!

Join me to learn:

Why focusing on the needs of trainees, schedulers, and environmental services will serve your whole workforce
Why becoming aware of our biases empowers us to create changes that feel good and effect change
How to leverage the perspectives of your historically less powerful employees to create meaningful policy changes

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Cultivate Community Engagement.
Creating meaningful community engagement starts with building shared values in your interactions. Getting your people to listen to you and invest in your community is much easier when you have a shared foundation.

It is worth taking the time to build engagement before you introduce big changes. The secret of employee engagement is that it automatically creates change and boosts productivity and well-being.

Investing in engagement first promotes sustainable outcomes in the long term.

Listen to find out:

Why team engagement starts with shared values
What strategies will help you to create team cohesion
Why it is worth the effort to build relationships with your frontline employees

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Maximize Leadership Buy-in.
You know you've got a relationship problem when you're motivated to create positive changes by you get stuck trying to convince your team (or your boss) that change is a good thing.

"What, a relationship problem?" You ask, "I thought this was about how to manage up?" Well, that's true. But the reality is that building relationships with shared values is the first step to managing up.

There is no manage-up quick scheme. You've got to invest in slow relationship-building first.

Listen to find out:

What actions will help you build team buy-in
Who you might be missing at the decision making table
What you can do to re-engage your leadership team

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Sustain Your Momentum.
When you learn to value your basic needs as a human, it will supercharge your sustainability as a leader. Your sustainability as a leader is critical to keeping your team afloat. Your team can't do it without you.

If you're struggling to make the impact you'd hope to create as a healthcare leader. Stop. Listen to your body. And take care of your magic needs first.

It's only after you are well that you'll be able to support your team and create a resilient healthcare system.

Start here! Ask the tough questions and prioritize yourself.

Listen to find out:

Why attention to self-care is the first step toward system change
Why daily habits matter
Why a resilient team depends on a resilient leader

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Connect with Your Why.
If workplace burnout is getting the better of you and you're wondering why you can't seem to get yourself and your team out of the endless cycle of productivity and fatigue, it may be time to reconnect with your why. And it may also be time to make some systemic changes.

Take a moment to ask yourself.

Why am I doing this work?
Why bother to put in the effort to create change?
Why do I care about the well-being of my people?
What do I need to do to create a system that feels nourishing to me?

Connecting with your why will help you make decisions that are values aligned and respectful of your reality.

Committing to values-based change is not easy. I studied employee well-being and workplace support as a doctoral student, and I still didn't get it right when applying these concepts to myself.

So give yourself some grace. Take the painful lessons you've gained and recommit to personal and workplace well-being on a new level!

Listen to find out:

Why well-being matters to me
How a postpartum mood disorder led me to prioritize organizational well-being
Why the relationships with your team are what matters most
How connecting with your why will boost your ability to create sustainable change

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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If you've been enjoying Menders season one, get excited, because seasons 2 and 3 are on their way!

Take a quick listen to hear a preview of what you can expect!

Season 2: How to create cultural transformation in your organization
- you'll hear my personal stories and challenges creating change
- you'll get bite-sized ideas about what you can do to create employee engagement
- and most of all, you'll learn how to sustain yourself!

Season 3: Women in leadership
- we'll focus on women's uniqueness as leaders
- we're covering diverse topics ranging from courage, boundaries, networking, neuroscience, and communication
- and you'll learn what these amazing women leaders have done to succeed at creating change where they've been planted!

Set a calendar reminder for the new episode drop date, January 1!

Here’s how I can help you with your mindset and the well-being of your healthcare system right now:

FREE resources:How to create organizational transformation season of Menders (season 2, episodes 1-12), Master the Art of Leadership Rounds Without Intimidating Your People workbook.

Get 27 action ideas from the Organizational Well-Being Assessment video course. Maximize leadership engagement, improve communication, and respond to distress.

Engage your leadership team and reorient towards healthy organizational behaviors that boost well-being in a Brown-Bag Conversation Series.

Commit to a Well-Being Incubation Experience for your senior or executive leadership team. Transform how you manage burnout hot spots tainting your system with dissatisfaction. ...

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Connecting with loved ones over the holidays can be a beautiful way to sustain and nourish ourselves. But these times can also be challenging and bring up difficulties related to past losses, interpersonal conflict with family and colleagues, overworking, and exhaustion.

Taking a moment to connect with gratitude and joy during beautiful and challenging times is a powerful way to sustain our momentum as leaders.

Here is a link to Jack Kornfield's Meditation on Gratitude and Joy - https://jackkornfield.com/meditation-gratitude-joy/

Enjoy!

Download your free guide 5-Steps to Direct & Kind Communication at Mending Health Systems (https://www.mendinghealthsystems.com/) to get started creating cultural transformation for your healthcare team today!

And if you loved today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review, subscribe to the show, and share this episode with a friend!

Want to work with me?

Are you a manager caught in between executive leaders and a frustrated frontline? Are you struggling to address systemic stressors such as team dynamics, burnout, or problematic policies in your clinic or unit?

If you are motivated to learn how to apply evidence-based practices to create lasting change within your team and healthcare system to create a culture of well-being, then Systemic Stress-Management for Managers is for you!

Go to Mending Health Systems (https://www.mendinghealthsystems.com/services-9) to sign up for Systemic Stress Management For Managers!

I would love to talk with you!

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Healing burnout & moral injury through radical community.

How do we put care back in healthcare?

How do we stop taking advantage of clinicians’ professionalism?

These are just two of the essential questions raised by David Kopacz, MD. We’re all talking about well-being and how to address burnout more effectively. And if you’ve ever found yourself mired up to your eyeballs in self-care and still not making progress towards creating rejuvenation in your life, then this episode is a must-listen!

Listen to find out:

What’s different between technicians
and healers
Why moral injury applies to both combat Veterans
& healthcare providers
How burnout got its start as an organizational
variable
Why doing more to care for ourselves and our
teams is not always the answer to addressing burnout
Why community is the true solution to burnout in
healthcare!

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“The antidote would be, how do we bring caring back in?”

(David Kopacz, Menders, episode 30)

David Kopacz, MD is a doctor, author, and artist. David inspires healthcare professionals to become medicine while engaging in our daily work and grabbling with challenges such as burnout, moral injury, and social alienation. His work brings together the full humanness of clinicians and the people we work to heal to create renewal within the healthcare system.

Stay Tuned! Menders season two will highlight women leaders in healthcare as they bring their unique perspectives to addressing challenges with employee burnout and cultural challenges. Keep an eye out for sneak peeks and video highlights from a truly inspiring group of women leaders. The new season of Menders will drop in January 2023!

Want to work with me?

If you’re struggling to address burnout or create cultural transformation in your health care system and want support, go to Mending Health Systems or click hereto learn about how I can provide expert consultation and transformational coaching for your leadership team.

I would love to talk with you!

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Leadership is Simple, when you use a PERSON centered approach

I know you’ve read all the books about what to do differently to become a better leader, but Michele Thomson is here to tell us why we already have what it takes to be the leaders our teams and healthcare systems need. Our teams need leaders who are willing to engage in the tough business of relationships to keep them safe and build trust. Leadership is that simple.

Listen to find out:

Why leadership is simpler than you think!
How Michele overcame a traumatic leadership experience to develop her model of leadership development
The simple (& powerful) ingredients of her PERSON-centered leadership model
What Michele has learned about the difference between being nice and being kind as a leader
And how cultural transformation is possible even in the bleakest cultural circumstances

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“I believe that as a leader I have two roles, it’s to keep people safe at work, physically and psychologically and it’s to build trust.”

(Michele Thomson, Menders, episode 29)

Learn more about Michele Thomson, a leadership coach, consultant, and founder of Curis Consulting. Michele has been a direct healthcare provider and healthcare leader who specialized in geriatric specialty care settings. She has built upon her experience as a direct care provider to create a model of leadership and employee development based on the evidence-based principles that work in patient care.

Want to work with me?

I would love to talk with you!

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Erin Gibb, a Fulfillment Coach for therapists and the host of Therapist Expanded, joined me for Menders episode 28.Erin is creating a revolution within the sphere of mental health treatment!

In this episode, Erin shares her philosophy of caring for and nourishing her healthcare organization as a living organism, before turning her attention to the well-being of the clinicians working in her organization, and then finally to the well-being of the people who receive care in her clinic. She shares that while her approach feels counterintuitive to many, focusing on organizational well-being has had far-reaching impacts and has created waves of healing and sustainability throughout her community.

Her early experiences working with First Nations people in a community with limited mental health resources have taught her to understand the principle of interdependence and the importance of focusing on organizational and clinician healing and wellness. When the organization heals itself, the people being cared for by the organization are empowered to heal the community.

Erin shares how she has created a thriving clinical community based on the core value of freedom. Now she coaches her clinicians to connect with the essential elements of their “being” and their deepest dreams and desires. Not only is this transformative for the people working as clinicians, but the people they are serving are also able to experience greater levels of healing, and freedom, and learn to become truly self-honoring.

Listen to find out:

What lessons Erin learned about culturally sensitive care while working with First Nations people in Northwestern Canada.
Why Erin prioritizes the well-being of her organization above client outcomes.
And why she believes that taking responsibility and owning our power create a revolution within the healthcare system!

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“Mental health revolution comes from therapists, caregivers, healthcare providers, putting their needs first, as that will actually help everyone.”

Erin Gibb (Menders, episode 28)

Find Erin at Therapist Expanded

Want to work with me?

If you’re curious to learn more or you know that you would like expert consultation and transformational coaching for your leadership team, then I would love to talk with you. You can find all the details about my current offerings here.

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For Menders episode 27, I had the privilege to sit down and talk with Ramses Rodriguez, an anxiety master coach, who shared how we can learn to use anxiety as a tool when we allow ourselves to be 100% honest about how it’s serving us in our lives.

In this episode, Ramses shares his journey from nurse’s assistant to master coach and the life lessons he’s learned along the way. Ramses combines evidence-based practices with holistic healing and coaching strategies to help high-performing individuals experience freedom from panic.

In healthcare, particularly high-pressure leadership roles, we don’t always cut ourselves slack, take breaks, or set necessary boundaries. And as Ramses so clearly articulates, many of us experience overwhelming anxiety (or panic) that begins to dictate our actions and limit our ability to perform at a high level or to fully live the lives we want to enjoy.

As Ramses shares, anxiety is a red flag that is hard to miss and easy to respect and may just give us an easy out when we’re starting to violate our boundaries or values. But we can learn to use anxiety as a tool as we let go of its indirect benefits and begin to address our needs directly.

Listen to find out:

How Ramses has learned to “hack” his anxiety triggers by creating systems that help him set sustainable boundaries.
Why taking the time to acknowledge the role anxiety plays in our lives can have a powerful healing impact.
And what strategies boost personal productivity without sacrificing well-being!

I hope this conversation inspires you to take an honest look at the challenges you may be experiencing and use any red flags of anxiety or panic to powerfully commit to self-care. When we take the time to honor and acknowledge our needs, we can create sustainable relationships and workplaces that allow us to care for and nourish ourselves and others.

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“I can set a boundary easily if my default physiological symptom is a boundary…and if [anxiety] were a tool, how do we leverage that? …It’s helping me fulfill a need for a boundary.”

“Think of the high performer. We need an out, this is an easy way where our body says, ‘No more.’”

Ramses Rodriguez (Menders, episode 27)

Additional Resources:

ABOUT RAMSES

Once plagued by panic attacks himself, Ramses Rodriguez now helps individuals suffering from panic and anxiety with science-based and holistic modalities. Ramses holds a Master of Science degree in Developmental Genetics and combines science theory and alternative therapies to help people become panic-free while keeping the career of their dreams.

Ramses has written two books in the genre of anxiety relief. In his first book Stop Pressing Your Own Panic Button, Ramses details the process he leads professionals through to achieve lasting relief from Panic Attacks. In his second book, The End of Writer's block, Ramses addresses the most effective tools for overcoming performance anxiety.

He now lives in Northern Virginia after starting the Panic Freedom Academy, LLC, where he coaches professionals on how to overcome panic attacks!

Download your free copy of Stop Pressing Your Own Panic Button: PanicFreedomBook.comREGISTER NOW!

Be sure to sign up for the latest Mending Health Systems Masterclass. Register NOW to save your seat!

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For Menders episode 26, I had the opportunity to explore values-based innovation and team leadership with Dr. Dan Drozd, the Chief Medical Officer of Picnic Health.

In this episode, Dan shares his non-linear career journey from English major to software engineer, infectious disease physician, and now to CMO. And he shares the leadership lessons he’s learned along the way through coaching, self-reflection, and openness to feedback from his team.

As a result of this intentionality, Dan has developed a framework for team leadership that maximizes shared decision-making and values-based empowerment. We explore how leading with values can impact both the leader and the team and creates space for everyone to operate at their highest level.

Dan also reflects on some challenges of creating a sustainable work culture in a virtual environment. And, he shares some of the innovative strategies that he and Picnic Health have tried to promote lasting relationships, that allows him to connect with his team and promote relationships between team members while making an effort to create a meaningful and connected workplace.

Listen to find out:

How his personal family history influenced his commitment to healthcare.
Why taking the time to have deeply personal conversations with our employees is a critical team leadership skill in the virtual world.
And what strategies he recommends to flatten the hierarchy and promote values-based decision-making at all levels of a healthcare organization!

I hope this conversation inspires you to consider your values and how you communicate what matters to you and your organization to your healthcare team. When our “why” is shared, we have the capacity to connect and create meaningful innovation.

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“I think what is important is modeling being vulnerable and real with people…that gives other members of the team impetus and space to do that as well…I want people to make mistakes, if we’re not screwing things up we’re probably not making a lot of progress, probably not taking enough risks.”

Dr. Dan Drozd (Menders, episode 26)

Additional Resources:

Picnic Health

When they win you win

REGISTER NOW!

Be sure to sign up for the latest Mending Health Systems Masterclass: Three mistakes that are costing your health system millions…and how to avoid them! We’ll be doing a deep dive on the true costs of burnout and turnover and problem-solving strategies to create real change now. Registration is live. I hope you can join us!

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear from you! I can be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Mending Health Systems. And of course, you’re always welcome to Book a call.

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I recently had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Jennifer O’Brien. It was a pleasure and a personally moving experience for me. I hope you enjoy listening!

After spending her career in healthcare as a changemaker and traveling executive, Jennifer became a family caregiver to her late husband Bob, who was himself a palliative care physician.

Now Jennifer is using her experiences on both sides of the healthcare experience to advocate for greater awareness of the tremendous lift family caregivers make when caring for their loved ones. Jennifer advocates for greater inclusivity and respect for family caregivers as they play a clinician-extending role on our healthcare teams. She even wrote a position description to help us all better understand the full extent of what family caregivers really do. It’s worth a read! And perhaps most importantly, Jennifer reminds us that as clinicians we are also human and caregivers for our aging parents, ill spouses, and injured children.

In this episode, Jennifer draws on her intimate experience of palliative care to reflect on the power of reimagining teamwork from the palliative care perspective across healthcare disciplines. And she brings us back to the core values of the healing profession: To care for the ill. To deliver babies. And to comfort the dying.

Listen to find out:

How focusing on her self-care through art led her to unexpectedly publish a book, the Hospice doctor’s widow.
Why reimagining teamwork has the power to breathe new life into day-to-day clinical interactions.
And how recommitting to our core values may just transform healthcare!

I hope this conversation inspires you to take the time to dig deep, connect with your values and elevate the members of our healthcare community who are less visible.

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“I wished that on my computer screen every morning, a little dashboard would pop up that would say, “we cared for this many patients yesterday, we delivered this many babies, and we comforted this many dying people.”

Jennifer O’Brien (Menders, episode 25)

Additional Resources:

You can find Jennifer O’Brien at The Hospice Doctor’s Widow

Family Caregiver Position Description

REGISTER NOW!

Be sure to sign up for the latest Mending Health Systems Masterclass:

Three mistakes that are costing your health system millions…and how to avoid them!

We’ll be doing a deep dive on the true costs of burnout and turnover and problem-solving strategies to create real change now. Registration is live. I hope you can join us!

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear from you! I can be found on LinkedIn and at Mending Health Systems. And of course, you’re always welcome to Book a call!

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For Menders episode 24,I had the opportunity to chat with Jenn Cochran, a Nurse Coach and the founder of Happy Whole Nurse. Jenn shared some of the lessons she’s learned from her years as a nurse and how she’s grown past some of the less helpful elements of the self-sacrificing nursing culture as she’s learned to care for her whole self.

Jenn shares her transformation experience from that “angry at the system nurse” to a nurse who is refreshed daily and delighted to do her job. And she attributes this transformation to boundary setting. Jenn’s story illustrates the power that we have to create transformation, even when we are working in challenging conditions and imperfect organizations.

And she highlights the power leaders have to care for their employees simply by taking the time to honor and value themselves. We can all model self-honoring actions for those around us. Our patients. Our employees. Our families.

Listen to find out:

· How focusing on her self-care was initially received by her nursing colleagues.

· Why focusing on nurses’ well-being is beneficial for the bottom line of healthcare organizations.

· And the simple strategies leaders can use to demonstrate that they value their employees!

I hope this conversation inspires you to take the time to value yourself and to consider what values your behaviors are modeling for those you care about.

Additional Resources:

You can find Jenn Cochran at Happy Whole Nurse on Tiktok, Instagram, and Facebook

REGISTER NOW!

If you’re not already signed up, register for my free masterclass, How to Avoid the Top Three Mistakes Leaders Make When Managing a Team Struggling with Burnout, on September 21st at noon PST!

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear from you! I can be found on LinkedIn and at Mending Health Systems. And of course, you’re always welcome to Book a call!

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For Menders episode 23,I had the opportunity to sit down with Daniel Hoang, a man of many talents who was willing to do a deep dive on change management, parenting, self-care, and how we can bring love into healthcare relationships to promote change on a human scale.

Daniel spent much of his career as a change management consultant working for healthcare organizations and corporations. Then 2020 hit. The COVID pandemic stopped his “go-go” lifestyle in its tracks and led him to grapple with the reality of his trauma history as the child of Vietnamese boat people. This led him on a healing journey that eventually caused him to rethink everything, including his approach to change management. As he shares in this episode, Daniel used

I’m sure I say this too often, but my conversation with Daniel is one of my all-time favorites, and I think you will find it meaningful too! If you’ve ever found yourself struggling as a person and a parent, you will appreciate this conversation.

Listen to find out:

· How focusing on his own needs and calming himself helps him to parent more effectively.

· Why he sees every individual as having the power to create transformation within our organizations.

· And the simple strategies leaders can use to engage their employees in typically tedious meetings deeply!

I hope this conversation inspires you to take the time to focus on healing yourself and to engage thoughtfully with your daily life. We could all use a little extra grace and some breathing room.

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!“We’re burning out our leaders today….”

“Leaders want to just keep working harder at it, and that’s never the answer because there will always be another thing that gets layered on top…Pause, create space, and create resilience in that leadership team. And then step back and solve this problem.”

Daniel Hoang (Menders, episode 23)

SAVE THE DATE!

I'll be hosting a free masterclass on September 21st at noon PST!

How to Avoid the Top Three Mistakes Leaders Make When Managing a Team Struggling with Burnout

I would love to have you there!

And, if you know any other well-being-focused (or curious) healthcare leaders or clinician changemakers who might be interested, I would love to connect with them. Feel free to spread the word or send them my way for all the details!

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear from you! I can be found on LinkedIn and at Mending Health Systems. And of course, you’re always welcome to Book a call!

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For Menders’ episode 22, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Khara Jefferson, a functional wellness consultant and the owner of KAJ Wellness. I found this conversation fun and joyful, and I hope you feel the same way!

Khara brought her functional medicine perspective and her history as an emergency medicine practitioner to our conversation. She shared her current approach to helping people move towards gut health, or as she says, to go from “toilet hell to feeling well.” Khara shared that changing how she interacts with patients has allowed her to get more joy out of her clinical work and keep herself sustainable.

And finally, we explored how she might take a functional medicine approach to examine the root causes of distress in our healthcare system. The excellent news is that Khara believes we can create transformation, but it will involve all of us fully committing to the process.

Listen to find out:

· How her own experience with a chronic illness impacted her journey into the field of medicine.

· Why she sees helping our patients understand the “how” of change as more crucial than telling them “what” they need to change.

· And why she believes everyone should be equipped with skills to conduct a rapid quality improvement project.

I hope this conversation inspires you to take care of yourself and take the time to find the root cause of distress on your team or in your system.

My favorite quotable moment from this episode!

“When a whole bunch of people are doing a whole bunch of the same things, it’s a ripple effect…and if you start by putting a whole bunch of little bitty things into place, eventually those little things become big things, and those big things will become huge things. That’s how we improve healthcare, but it can’t be just me. And it can’t be just you. It has to be a whole bunch of like-minded people.”

Dr. Khara Jefferson (Menders, episode 22)

SAVE THE DATE!

I wanted to let you know that I'll be hosting a free masterclass on September 21st at noon PST! I would love to have you there! It will be fun and interactive. And by the end of this masterclass, you will have a clear road map to create cultural transformation for your team, clinic, or healthcare organization.

Additional Resources:

Find Dr. Khara Jefferson at https://www.kajwellness.com/

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Menders episode 21 is out now, and it is a treat!

I sat down with Adele Wang, and while we had intended to think through the mind-body impacts of stress and burnout, we found ourselves deep in conversation about calling and what nourishes us as humans and healers.

I loved this conversation and am still reverberating with Adele’s ideas.

Adele shared how she works with healthcare providers to help them move from what they know to what they feel by working with them to reconnect with their body’s deep knowing. Her work allows clinicians at risk of burnout to reconnect with themselves. And from this place of self-honoring, they have a choice about how to re-engage with their work as a healer, whether that is in the traditional system or outside it.

Listen to find out:

· How her work in a small intimate integrative health clinic taught her to see that healthcare can be provided differently.

· Why we both see community as the secret for both patients and clinicians.

· And how she draws on what gives her clients pleasure in their non-work lives to help reinvigorate their connection to their calling as healers.

I hope this conversation inspires you to take some time to consider what you enjoy that has nothing to do with healthcare.

Take some time to answer this question, and then reconnect with your work when you’re ready.

My favorite quotable moments from this episode!

“The missing element: you have no community and neither do your patients…”

Adele Wang (Menders, episode 21)

“It’s not just one person going to see the patient, it’s a team. It’s a community channeled through you.”

Adele Wang (Menders, episode 21)

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me, I would love to hear from you! I can be found on LinkedIn and at Mending Health Systems. And of course, you’re always welcome to Book a call!

Additional Resources:
Find Adele Wang here - https://adelewang.lpages.co/introduction-to-spark-your-feminine-presence/

And check out her podcast, All things human.

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Menders episode 20 is gracing the airwaves!

In this episode, Dr. Liz Dykhouse highlights the differences between wellness and well-being. She shares how she has integrated well-being into the core curriculum of her family medicine residency. And she provides a framework for how well-being naturally leads to systemic advocacy in healthcare.

Liz and I reflect on strategies that allow clinical supervisors and healthcare leaders to foster a culture of safety in which learners become comfortable acknowledging their personal challenges and reaching out to their supervisors and community for support.

Listen to find out:

· Why (& when) she trains her residents to move away from a problem-solving approach!

· Why she believes that focusing on well-being now will create a sustainable foundation for long-term sustainability within our healthcare system.

· And how she balances her own workload to maximize meaning and promote her personal sustainability in healthcare and medical education.

Here are a couple of my favorite quotable moments from this episode:

“We have to live within the system to promote change.”

Dr. Liz Dykhouse (Menders, episode 20)

“I felt better today but that didn’t solve the problems…I want [residents] to feel empowered to advocate for change…I also want them to know how to care for themselves individually!”

Dr. Liz Dykhouse (Menders, episode 20)

“The thing that I have found most helpful working within the system myself and working collaboratively with leaders in a variety of different settings within the traditional system is the willingness of leaders to have the [tough] conversation."

Me! (Dr. Nicola De Paul)

I hope this episode inspires you to consider what you can do to care for yourself in this moment and to take one tiny action to promote systemic transformation.

Upcoming Masterclass:

How to Use a Road Map to Transform a Toxic Employee Culture into a Culture of Connection, Hope, and Well-being in 2023

During This Live Masterclass, You Will Learn:

1. Wellness vs Well-Being, wait there’s a difference?

2. How to get your team on the same page & on your side!

3. How to shut your mouth and open your ears, institutionally speaking.

4. How to identify meaningful and responsive strategies (that are under your control) to address employee complaints and satisfy your people.

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me, I would love to hear from you! I can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook, and at Mending Health Systems. And of course, you’re always welcome to Book a call!

Additional Resources:Healthcare providers’ perceived support from their organization is associated with lower burnout and anxiety amid the COVID-19 pandemic - Reitz (2021) -
From PLOS ONE:

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In this episode of Menders, Dr. Julia Mackaronis, a licensed clinical psychologist and the lead mental health clinician for the Quinault Indian Nation, shares her experiences learning to acknowledge the reality of the blind spots inherent within her cultural frame as a white Western psychologist.

We explore the process of learning to be in a good relationship with each other as we foster a community of caring. And, Julia shares how she has learned to understand the concept of interdependence while working within her local indigenous community and her global community.

Listen to find out:

How she has learned to value welcoming as a critical step in the healing process!
How she works to acknowledge and take ownership of the harm caused by her internalized white supremacy and settler colonialism so that she can mitigate that harm in relationships within the indigenous community!
And why she believes it is time for clinicians to focus on self-care (but not for the sake of being a more efficient or resilient clinician)!

This episode will get you wondering about your own cultural assumptions and thinking about how caring for yourself might be a radical act of compassion for our planet.

It’s time to recognize the beauty and freedom of our interdependence.

Want to connect?

Please take the time to share your thoughts with me, I would love to hear from you! I can be found on LinkedIn and at Mending Health Systems.

SAVE THE DATE!

Wednesday, September 21st at 1200 PST, I will be hosting a brand-new (FREE) masterclass!

I will teach you how to move from survival mode to sustainability as you learn to reorient your organization to prioritize easeful relationships and effective communication between leadership and frontline staff. You will learn a framework to create a sustainable culture of well-being in your healthcare organization.

Additional Resources:Wilfred Bion - Notes on Memory and Desire

Arthur W. Blume – A new psychology based on community, equality, and care of the earth: an indigenous American perspective

Lisa Grayshield, Washo Mihecoby, & Anita Mihecoby – Indigenous ways of knowing as a philosophical base for the promotion of peace and justice in counseling education and psychology

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Dr. Cindy Rubin is a pediatrician and breastfeeding medicine specialist who decided to transition out of the healthcare system and chart her own path.

In Menders episode 18, Dr. Cindy Rubin shares her story of taking a leap of faith from the traditional healthcare system into her own practice as a direct primary care pediatrician.

For Cindy, making this transition allowed her to create a fulfilling work life where she is able to structure her patient interactions so that she has plenty of time for healing interactions with her patients and still makes it home for dinner every night.

And perhaps most important of all, taking this leap of faith has challenged her to take full ownership of her value as a human being in a healing profession.

Listen to find out:

How she went from missing dinner and bedtime with her family every night to creating a flexible schedule that allows her to attend her children’s school lunches and baseball games!
How she used a gutsy publication to connect with a community of like-minded physicians who applauded her as she brought light to the challenges in her health system!
Why you need to connect with a community of like-minded clinicians and a simple way to find people who will champion your worth in your health system!

Here are some of my favorite quotable moments from this episode:

“It was manageable and suddenly zero to 60, it was like I was exactly where I had been and I realized I can’t do this. I’d gotten a taste of what it could be like to be able to see fewer patients a day”
Dr. Cindy Rubin

“Something shifts when people take on a systemic level of responsibility and take on the system’s values. It’s important to me to question that….if we change our values and commit to changing our values, I believe things can happen differently!”

Me! (Dr. Nicola De Paul)

This episode will get you thinking, laughing, and motivated to reach out to your community of colleagues.

It’s time to value ourselves.

Go listen to the podcast and let me know what you think!

I would love to hear what you are doing to acknowledge and honor your own value. Connecting with the Menders community keeps me motivated. Thank you for sharing!
Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at find me at www.Mendinghealthsystems.com Additional Resources:

To connect with Dr. Cindy Rubin, find her at In-Touch Pediatrics & Lactation - https://intouchpediatrics.com/dr-cindy-rubin

Cindy Rubin - "It's not me it's the system" - https://intouchpediatrics.com/in-touch-pediatrics-blog/its-not-me-its-the-system

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Dr. Steve Hunt is a primary care physician board certified in environmental and occupational medicine.

In this episode of Menders, we explore the impacts of toxic environments on the well-being of physicians and healthcare systems as complex living organisms. When we see teams and elements of our institutions crumbling, we can be sure that something unhealthy is happening. As Steve so aptly points out, we're only as healthy as the team doing the worst!

Acknowledging our toxic environments is a first step that allows us to turn toward the challenging but rewarding work of community building and repair. Refocusing on human connection in healthcare may be the medicine we need to heal.

I hope that you take the time to reflect on one step that you as an individual can take to respond to the needs of yourself, your colleagues, and your organization. Cultural transformation starts with our small actions to care for each other.

And as always, thank you for listening!

I would love to hear from you!Tell me about what you are doing to bring healing and transformation into your healthcare community. Connecting with the Menders community keeps me motivated. Thank you for sharing!
**Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@mendinghealthsystems.com!

Additional Resources:**David Abram - The spell of the sensuous
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/319/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-by-david-abram/

Ernest Becker - The structure of evil - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696%28196901%295%3A1%3C92%3A%3AAID-JHBS2300050116%3E3.0.CO%3B2-N

Robert Sapolsky - Why Zebras don't get ulcers - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805073690/whyzebrasdontgetulcers

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Aaron Katz is a Principal Lecturer Emeritus at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health.

As Aaron shares in this episode, his brain naturally thinks at the 30,000-foot public policy level. I am thrilled to take this step back to look at the world of healthcare and consider how the daily lives of clinicians are impacted by local, state, and national policy decisions.

We consider the impacts these pressures have on daily clinical life, ranging from the length of patient appointments all the way to the loss of federal protection for abortion rights. As we consider these tough challenges, Aaron highlights the simple actions each of us can take to begin impacting local and national policy.

We spend time reflecting on the underlying values of our healthcare system. And we consider the challenges and benefits of some alternative health systems in our global community.

I hope that you take the time to reflect on one step that you as an individual can take to engage with health policy at the hyper-local or national level.

And as always, thank you for listening!

I would love to hear from you!Tell me about the most significant challenges getting in the way of your organization’s willingness to prioritize clinician well-being right now. Hearing your stories brightens my day and helps me better understand your reality. Thank you for sharing!
**Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@mendinghealthsystems.com!

Additional Resources:**Thomas Rice, a health economist at UCLA - Health Economics Reconsidered - https://www.ache.org/learning-center/publications/books/2289

Also by Thomas Rice, Health Insurance Systems: An International Comparison - https://www.elsevier.com/books/health-insurance-systems/rice/978-0-12-816072-5

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Dr. Mari Yamamoto is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor in a Family Medicine Residency at a large academic medical center.

In this episode, she shares some challenges of navigating full-time roles as a clinician, parent, and partner. She shares how her values guide her daily decision-making and prompt her to set boundaries to protect her most important priorities. She also reflects on some of the systemic supports that have made it possible for her to find work-life flexibility in COVID times. And we explore some of the challenges that make it difficult for healthcare systems to provide maximum flexibility.

What might healthcare look like if we recreated our systems to allow clinicians working in the system to thrive? It is time that we sat down and asked ourselves this critical question.

What small step could your organization take towards creating a nurturing and nourishing environment for everyone involved?

I would love to hear from you!Tell me about your biggest challenges with setting and maintaining boundaries in a clinical or health leadership role. Hearing your stories brightens my day and helps me understand your reality. Thank you for sharing!
Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@gmail.com!
Additional Resources:

Career Fit & Burnout: Shanafelt et al. 2009 - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/415000

Healing: our path from mental illness to mental health by Thomas Insel - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670329/healing-by-thomas-insel-md/
Workload & Burnout: Nassar et al. 2021 - https://www.cureus.com/articles/24690-academic-clinicians-workload-challenges-and-burnout-analysis

Workplace Flexibility: Maglalang et al. 2021 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8102798/

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Dr. Maia Carter is an internal medicine physician who works as both a frontline primary care provider and as a leader in healthcare innovation and virtual care.

In this episode, she shares how she has learned to slow down and enjoy her life’s journey as she has shifted her focus to succeeding at life and not just striving for the next goal. We talk about how this transition has shaped her approach to leadership and led her to focus on crafting belonging and mentoring the unique individuals on her team.

We also discuss the challenges healthcare systems face as we all strive to balance access to patient care with a need to care for ourselves and our employees.

Your organization is ripe and ready for innovation! So, get out your virtual whiteboard, take some notes, and start crafting a healthier and richer experience for yourself and your employees.

**Are you interested in working with me?

Do you have a question you would love to hear addressed on Menders?

Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@gmail.com!**

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Dr. Scott Michael is a clinical psychologist and the Director of Clinical Training and Education at Lyra Health. He has spent his career equipping clinicians with the top-notch clinical skills to provide evidence-based treatment to diverse populations.

In this episode, he shares the challenges to equity in healthcare training that have an outsized impact on trainees from marginalized backgrounds. He recently joined Lyra Health and is excited to share about Lyra’s innovative work to create a BIPOC Social Worker fellowship training program.

As you listen, take a moment to consider how your healthcare organization could take additional steps to increase equity in the healthcare pipeline. We all are responsible for ensuring that the healthcare workforce becomes representative of our most diverse and unique communities.

**Are you interested in working with me? Do you have a question you would love to hear addressed on Menders?

Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@gmail.com!**Additional Resources:

Lyra Health BIPOC Fellowship Program -https://www.lyrahealth.com/blog/introducing-the-lyra-bipoc-fellowship-program/

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Dr. Jessica Chen is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.

She has focused her career on trauma-focused psychotherapy and research designed to promote health equity for underserved population.

In this episode, she shares some of her experiences as a woman of color navigating the challenges of academic medicine and other healthcare spaces not designed to empower women of color.

Listen to find out why she believes that women of color make the best bosses!

And, then consider what you can do as a healthcare leader to share your power and create resilient and supportive spaces for people of color. Hint, it starts with recruiting people of color or other marginalized identities who specialize in creating safe and supportive spaces to join your organization!

Enjoy!

Bio - Dr. Jessica Chen - https://www.jessicachenphd.com/about

Interested in working with me? Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@gmail.com!
Additional Resources:

To work with Dr. Jessica Chen - https://www.jessicachenphd.com/

Kemi Doll - 10 lies of academic medicine: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1729958/8308329-01-ten-lies-of-academic-medicine

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Leah Klug is a Seattle-based palliative care chaplain. She has spent her career as a spiritual care specialist helping to meet the spiritual needs of clinicians and patients within public sector healthcare systems.

In this episode, she shares how she and her palliative care team quickly equipped clinicians within their healthcare system with the palliative care skills required to navigate the challenges associated with caring for a massive influx of dying patients throughout the COVID pandemic.

She also shares how her team works to help healthcare providers to develop rituals to grieve their losses, maintain their human dignity, and reaffirm their identity as healers in challenging circumstances.

Leah also discusses how healthy team functioning benefits from a grounding in each team member’s spiritual tradition (whether mindfulness practice or rocking out to Meatloaf).

Finally, she shares her perspective on healthcare providers as “essential” humans whose clinicians and healthcare leaders must prioritize spiritual and emotional needs.

Interested in working with me? Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Dr.NicolaDePaul@gmail.com!

Additional Resources:

Spiritual Care

Transforming Chaplaincy - Desjardins & Redl (2022):
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.transformchaplaincy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/eBook-final-22.2.27.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1655077157656000&usg=AOvVaw1gh-8ee_tItCIua8psA0ws

Moral Injury

APA Guidelines for Managing Moral Injury (2020): https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.psychiatry.org/File%2520Library/Psychiatrists/APA-Guidance-COVID-19-Moral-Injury.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1655077157657000&usg=AOvVaw1nOACskv_yOGT51YmRPE-F

Moral Injury in times of COVID-19- Williams, Brundage, & Williams (2020): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7195905/

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In this special solo episode, I talk about how healthcare leaders can use local well-being surveys to respond to the crisis of clinician burnout and turnover in our healthcare system.

It is fabulous that many healthcare organizations are tuning in to the challenges that clinicians are experiencing related to systemic burnout and systemic causes of turnover. But recognizing that there is a problem is not sufficient and sometimes leaders lack clarity about what their clinical employees need and how to respond.

Taking the time to use a simple tool such as a well-being survey can help healthcare leaders make significant progress toward identifying and addressing their employees’ needs for systemic support.

Stay tuned until the end of this episode, when I make a special “top-secret” announcement. And, as always, thank you for listening!

Additional Resources:

Organizational Support

Healthcare providers’ perceived support from their organization is associated with lower burnout and anxiety amid the COVID-19 pandemic - Reitz (2021) -
From PLOS ONE: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259858

The Role of Perceived Organizational Support in Mental Health of Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study - Chatzitoffis et al. (2021) -
https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.707293

Physician Burnout

Sara Berg - Practice Management & Physician Burnout- https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/physician-burnout-which-medical-specialties-feel-most-stress

Program Evaluation & Study Design

Real-world program evaluation, Funderburk & Shepardson (2017) - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28617014/

Wellness Programs

Michelle Barton - Stop framing wellness programs around self-care - https://hbr.org/2022/04/stop-framing-wellness-programs-around-self-care

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Dr. Orlando Sanchez is an indigenous neuropsychologist who has learned to integrate his indigenous perspective into the Western framework of the U.S. healthcare system.

In this episode, Dr. Sanchez shares how he has developed bicultural competence and shares his perspective on how our healthcare system can grow from cultural encapsulation toward cultural competence and cultural sensitivity. He also explores how healthcare leaders can work to retain ethnic minority trainees and professionals by creating space for indigenous and ethnic minority values.

Finally, he reminds us that while there may not be one clear solution to solve all of the challenges facing healthcare, we can work together to do our part to create transformation.

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Nurses are the backbone of healthcare!

Kary Gregory was born to be a nurse and has nearly twenty years of nursing wisdom to share.

In this episode, she shares her passion for the nursing field and advocates for the well-being of her colleagues who have borne (& continue to bear) the burden of death, fatigue, and understaffing as nurses on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic. She shares her firsthand experiences and reflects on the emerging legal challenges that threaten the culture of safety nurses work so hard to create.

She also advocates for safe spaces for open and honest dialogue between nursing and the highest levels of healthcare administration as we work to create a sustainable future for nursing and the U.S. healthcare system.

Additional Resources:

American Nurse Association - https://www.nursingworld.org/

American Association of Nurse Practitioners - https://www.aanp.org/

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Dr. Dahyeon Kim is a postdoctoral fellow in clinical psychology. Dahyeon has a longstanding interest in creating healthy healthcare systems and training environments.

In this episode, she shares her experiences as a clinical psychology trainee and Korean American woman navigating the U.S. healthcare system. She reflects on interactions with supervisors and shares the strategies that have helped her successfully negotiate challenging situations in cross-racial supervisory relationships.

She also shares how supervisors who prioritize building an open relationship with trainees that promotes safety and welcomes trainee feedback can negotiate their race-based blind spots without damaging their supervisory relationships.

Additional Resources:

Galan et al. (2021) - Editorial: A call to action for an antiracist clinical science. - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15374416.2020.1860066

Narine et al. (2022) - Call to action: mobilizing clinical psychology programs to support AAPI trainees through an anti-racism framework - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359847696_Call_to_Action_Mobilizing_Clinical_Psychology_Programs_to_Support_AAPI_Trainees_Through_an_Anti-Racism_Framework

Park Hong (2021) - Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning - http://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/605371/

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Anita Verna Crofts is a Seattle-based writer, University of Washington faculty member, and Artist in Residence in the University of Washington's Communication Leadership graduate program.

Anita has spent her career exploring the intersections between food, culture, and narrative. She works with graduate students and international public health leaders to transform leadership, management, and policy development through a storytelling lens.

In this episode, we discuss the power of storytelling and listening as critical leadership tools. We explore the transformational quality of presence to promote healing and connection in healthcare. And Anita challenges leaders to take ownership of their responsibility to listen to and empower the underrepresented voices in their institutions.

Anita Verna Crofts - Bio:

https://com.uw.edu/people/faculty/anita-verna-crofts/

Additional resources:

Beach, M. C., Roter, D., Korthuis, P. T., Epstein, R. M., Sharp, V., Ratanawongsa, N., Cohn, J., Eggly, S., Sankar, A., Moore, R. D., & Saha, S. (2013). A multicenter study of physician mindfulness and health care quality. Annals of family medicine, 11(5), 421–428.
https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1507

Greenleaf - Servant Leadership:
https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/

Ozenc, K. & Hagan, M. (2019). Rituals for Work: 50 ways to create engagement, shared purpose, and a culture that can adapt to change. Wiley.
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Rituals+for+Work%3A+50+Ways+to+Create+Engagement%2C+Shared+Purpose%2C+and+a+Culture+that+Can+Adapt+to+Change-p-9781119530787

Scheepers, R. A., Emke, H., Epstein, R. M., & Lombarts, K. (2020). The impact of mindfulness-based interventions on doctors' well-being and performance: A systematic review. Medical education, 54(2), 138–149. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.14020

Schiffman (2021). Learning to Listen to Patients - New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/well/live/narrative-medicine.html

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Dr. David Kopacz is a Seattle-based psychiatrist and integrative medicine physician.

Throughout his career, Dr. Kopacz has studied burnout, physician wellness, and moral injury.

This episode discusses how both burnout and moral injury have their roots in systemic challenges. Dr. Kopacz also shares his perspective on the costs of caring in our current health system and how healthcare organizations have developed the bad habit of taking advantage of clinicians' professionalism by expecting clinicians to go above and beyond their duties to care. Our current system does not prioritize care and compassion for clinicians or patients.

On a hopeful note, incentivizing caring for all people within the organization – from housekeeping to leadership – may allow us to create a collective commitment to supporting the humanity of our healthcare system. It is time that we commit to radically caring for each other as we rebuild caring healthcare systems.

Dr. David Kopacz - Bio - https://www.davidkopacz.com/

Additional Resources:

Michelle Barton - Stop framing wellness programs around self-care - https://hbr.org/2022/04/stop-framing-wellness-programs-around-self-care

Sara Berg - Physician Burnout - https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/physician-burnout-which-medical-specialties-feel-most-stress

Dr. Glaucomflecken - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYDVFfp_AN1WBiNwaf9522w

David Kopacz - Rehumanizing Medicine - https://www.davidkopacz.com/reviews-interviews-rehumanizing-medicine

Danielle Ofri - The business of medicine depends on exploiting doctors and nurses - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/hospitals-doctors-nurses-burnout.html

Tzreciak & Mazzarelli - Compassionomics - https://www.compassionomics.com/

ZDoggMD - It's not burnout it's moral injury - https://zdoggmd.com/moral-injury/

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Nancy Campbell is a leadership development consultant who works with executive leadership teams that serve disadvantaged and marginalized people.

In this episode, Nancy shares her perspective on why transformation must start with a renewed commitment to love and relationship at the top of the hierarchy in healthcare organizations!

She shares how leaders who start with love have the power to create institutions that put healthcare employees first, which naturally generates an abundance of energy and connection that flows out and makes a nurturing and healing environment for our patients.

She also shares why failure helps leaders gain perspective on their successes and prioritize efforts to create an environment that enables their team to achieve remarkable outcomes.

Go slow to go fast! It’s time to slow down and invest in love and relationships in healthcare.

Additional Resources:
https://www.marcusbuckingham.com/lovework/

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Dr. Simha Reddy is a Seattle-based internal medicine physician who manages a primary care program that serves Veterans experiencing homelessness.

In this episode, Dr. Reddy brings us back to the days when physicians went out to treat their patients with little more than a stethoscope and a doctor’s bag. Today he and his team use laptops, but the principles of meeting patients where they are and providing high-quality care that meets patient needs and allows clinical teams to do their best work are the same. Dr. Reddy empowers his team to go above and beyond to provide excellent patient care. Their clinical interactions have built-in flexibility and prioritize relationship building.

This transformative way of providing healthcare starts with executive healthcare administrators. As Dr. Reddy says, the people on the frontlines of healthcare and even the fight against COVID are health policymakers.

It's time to think big and creatively!

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Dr. Craig Santerre is a Seattle-based clinical psychologist with years of experience leading interprofessional teams in the public sector.

In this episode, Dr. Santerre provides a framework to help us understand the aspects of burnout and why the impact of burnout is so significant for healthcare providers. He shares how leaders can create systems that buffer the pressures of working in healthcare and maximize team resilience by paying attention to and honoring each clinician's unique strengths, needs, and diversity.

We also discuss how mindfulness is a powerful tool to help healthcare leaders stay compassionate as they work to guide their teams through even the most challenging circumstances.

Additional Resources:

Nassar, A. K., Waheed, A., & Tuma, F. (2019). Academic Clinicians' Workload Challenges and Burnout Analysis. Cureus, 11(11), e6108.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6901369/

Weiss, L. (2019). How We Work: Live your purpose, reclaim your sanity, and embrace the daily grind. Harper Collins.

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-work-leah-weiss?variant=32116604960802

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Dr. Mayan Bomszyk is an internal medicine physician and executive leader in primary care within the public sector.

A longtime champion of primary care physicians and other healthcare providers, Dr. Bomsztyk, talks about putting people first and empowering clinicians to care for themselves while caring for patients.

She offers her views about why clinicians need to have autonomy at work. She shares her experiences of being human and a physician during COVID times and encourages clinicians to show up in fully human and imperfect ways in clinical care. She discusses how letting patients see our kids or dogs in the background has the potential to strengthen our relationships with patients and colleagues.

Above all, Dr. Bomsztyk encourages us to invite ease and sustainability into our current challenging healthcare environment.

Additional Resources:
ALL IN: WellBeing First for Healthcare: 2022 Healthcare Workforce Rescue Package https://www.allinforhealthcare.org/articles/76-2022-healthcare-workforce-rescue-package

Healthcare providers’ perceived support from their organization is associated with lower burnout and anxiety amid the COVID-19 pandemic
From PLOS ONE: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259858

The Role of Perceived Organizational Support in Mental Health of Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study
https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.707293

Menders: Love & Leadership in Health Systems: Recent Episodes

Dr. Nicola De Paul