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Carlos Arce:
And if the organization lacks a true understanding of what it's going to take to create a resilient workplace, understand what it takes to create a shift in workplace culture, then they may struggle with that.
Jim Trounson:
Medvale is a community helping health care innovators and leaders make a difference. One of the ways we do this is to identify movers and shakers who are deploying their good ideas to make the world healthier. Then we broadcast those stories over Medvale Radio. This is Jim Trounson, your host. Today I'm chatting with Carlos Arce, the company leader at Elation. Carlos, welcome to Medvale Radio.
Carlos Arce:
Thanks for having me. It's great to be on board.
Jim Trounson:
Well, Carlos, there's a lot of problems of noise and hype, even if you will, about burnout of health care workers, physicians, even health care organizations. And I know Elation, which we're going to hear more about here pretty soon, is worried about this. So could you give me your views of what's going on out there that needs a better solution?
Carlos Arce:
Well, thanks, Jim. Yeah, I think that we have seen significant movement in the United States and globally as well around the topic of burnout within health care. And in addition to that of the impact on the individual is how that actually impacts the health care systems themselves, which it is a significant sometimes we refer to that as almost kind of apocalyptic what we're seeing, because it's impacting all the obvious things, patient satisfaction, productivity, retention of physicians, the quality of care. So it's a pretty significant phenomenon that's happening. And now you overlap on top of it, a global pandemic and in situations that have really, really exacerbated some of the limited resources and capacity. And now you've kind of just added on to what was already a very difficult, tough situation.
Jim Trounson:
Well, and I really like this tagline, if you will, that Elation uses. It says We created a health care system that takes the world's most resilient people and burns them out. How sad.
Carlos Arce:
Yeah, yeah. And it's a significant reality that we're trying to at least be honest about where we're coming from. Right. And the one piece of that element and the reason why we use that tagline is we want people to understand that the way we're going to attack this is we're going to pay attention to the system and the types of stressors that the system, the workplace, the profession itself has been creating, sometimes without really a conscious awareness. And it's a give and takes that over time has started to take much, much more than give back to those folks who are doing some great work.
Jim Trounson:
Thank you, Carlos. And I certainly have come to develop a huge respect for you and the sort of role that you're playing now at Elation and the good that you are doing in that role. So tell me about is if this burnout is such an issue out there, which we all know that it is, what are some of the solutions? Not that I want to talk here pretty soon about put Elation does, but what's a broader spectrum of what other companies are doing to try to deal with burnout?
Carlos Arce:
Yeah, I think some I think all organizations have it on their radar. And I think the best way to describe what most are doing is they're applying some of their existing methodologies to problem solve that to this particular issue. And again, well-intended. We're seeing committees that are have been formed where they are maybe cross-functional representation, talking about how they want to address burnout. In some cases, there are specific tactics that people kind of gravitate toward and they may be investing in those in regard to creating offerings for clinicians, whether it's a mindfulness-based or mindfulness type of training or introducing concepts like meditation or meditative thought practices within the system. These are all specific little tactics that organizations tend to use. My critique of that would be that there are often not truly understanding that we're trying to shift the entire workplace culture and that to shift workplace culture, it requires a competency that, to be honest, and transparent, is not necessarily a competency that is championed within health care. Health care organizations aren't necessarily the places that you go to to find the most dynamic workplace, most engaging workplaces. And I don't say that in a critical way. I say and being honest about the fact that they're focused on taking care of patients and provide saving lives and being able to create reduce pain and suffering, that's not necessarily the place that you're going to go find some of the most dynamic methodologies to create and engaging interactions, to be able to make sure that you're tapping into the performance and the capacity of each individual. So, unfortunately, to answer your question, well-intended, we have different types of tactics that have been established. I would say that most of them fall within the expertise of the organization itself, which means that also they're limited by the expertise of the organization itself. And if the organization lacks understanding of what it's going to take to create a resilient workplace, understand what it takes to create a shift in workplace culture, then they may struggle with that.
Jim Trounson:
Well, let's use the example that I'm a CEO of a hospital. And I've got some anxiety here, the pandemic about my workforce to include my medical staff, the departments, the nursing, everybody being burned out or getting stressed because of COVID on top of an already very stressful job. So what could you do for my hospital?
Carlos Arce:
Our organization has been able to focus very specifically on groups and the tactics associated that will actually shift folks from a state of burnout risk into a state of high performance. And so what we've learned along that journey is that what impacts us is all very unique to us. It's how we see the world. And so one of the things that we've been working on for health care leaders is a tool that we call the well-being workbench. And the well-being workbench is a relatively short assessment, 10 to 15 minutes tops, that is available to every health care worker that would be able to get a sense as to some of the drivers of well-being that aren't always overtly obvious. And what I mean by that is we're paying attention to well-being, not only physiological well-being, mental well-being, but we're paying attention to things like the social well-being that people experience, the communities they're in, the relational well-being that they experience at work, how that impacts folks. And if we add in the current situation, we are with COVID-19, the stressors that come from this current dynamic that we're in regard to this pandemic.
Carlos Arce:
So we have this tool that we offer organizations that can be applied throughout the system. It has a small panel of questions that if you are a physician, you would complete. Another small panel of questions that if you are a nurse, that you would complete. So it allows us to look at the different groups within an organization and get a flavor for where there may be high risk. Where are there areas where there are teams that might be important to focus on? Where are there groups of individuals that seem to be thriving? And how can we pay attention to the leadership work that they're doing there or the dynamics that are in their departments that are helping there? So the beginning point of that for us would be to to give the health care system the kind of way to assess their current state in an accurate manner that correlates directly to this potential burnout risk and taken back to reality the important factors that not only important but the varied factors that impact our capacity to perform at our best.
Jim Trounson:
But we're nervous about getting infected, infecting others. And can you do this in a physically distanced kind of a way?
Carlos Arce:
Everything that we're doing now is done virtually. So it can be done. The assessment is done online for each individual. They complete the assessment, the intervention work that we've been doing, whether it's one on one coaching work that we do or the group facilitation work we have done is all done virtually. We have focused significantly on some of the best practices for creating engaging and productive meetings. And then we started a few years ago to start to tinker in the virtual world because of some of the clients that we were working with from different parts of the country and across the globe. Now we are able to move all of that work into the virtual capacity and do it in a way that really does optimize interactions and make it as safe as possible for folks to participate. The other element I'll add to that, Jim, is that we're doing in a time valuable manner. We want to reduce the amount of time that people outlay to complete things. We want it to be quick. We want it to be able to be something that's meaningful. So in the assessment that we offer, every individual on completing the assessment gets a very, very specific and personalized individual report that basically says, look, here are some of the buffers that are actually helping you, that you are that are putting you in a place that ultimately helping your performance. And here are some of the stressors. Here are some of the things that you might be experiencing that might be kind of undermining your capacity to perform at your best.
Carlos Arce:
And we do that because we want people to feel that they have been rewarded for investing their 10, 15 minutes to complete the survey. That, by the way, when we look at all those surveys in the aggregate, give an organization great insights as to what's going on in their organization, lets them see some of the organizational stressors, some of the organizational buffers that are actually serving them or undermining their desired outcomes. But we want to take into account the fact that if we ask you to complete something, that you give something in return that's valuable to you, and then that puts us in a position to be able to sit down with the leadership team and say, let's look at what this looks like in the aggregate. Let's look at the stressors. Let's look at the differences between your nursing group, your physician group, your staff group. We have the capacity to really get into departments and areas. It's up to the organization itself. When we launched the survey, how we break that down, we always limit the capacity to break it down so that we never undermine somehow risk the anonymity of an individual. So we only look at groups within clusters of five or more. If we don't have that number, then you can't look at it, the small group. So we want to be respectful of that. But we also want to be helpful to organizations to be able to see some.
Jim Trounson:
I've seen some of your beautiful reports, those sunburst diagrams that you can drill into and drill in and to and drill into, come up with things like, well, Mr. Hospital CEO, you have a problem in L & D., but your emergency department is just fine. So let's put energy where you appear to have more opportunities.
Carlos Arce:
And that's the intent right.. The intent is we want to be able to make the invisible visible. We want you to be able to see some of these dynamics and to be able to understand how this is playing out and for you to have the best information possible so that you can focus on the things that you think will make a difference for you. Everyone's operating with very limited resources right now. We want to create as little waste as possible. So let's find the places that could give you the greatest return or that you're at the greatest risk or that you have the greatest capacity to cascade and share because you see success here and all you want to do is really get the word out at something that's happening in this department is something we want to replicate in other areas. So that's the kind of the intent of the work we're doing.
Jim Trounson:
Well, so, Carlos, let's talk about what an interested listener might do because I think we're creating a lot of interest here. And how do they get a hold of you?
Carlos Arce:
Yeah, I think the easiest direction, of course, we have our Elation.com website that has some references in it. But I would love as a result of this conversation I'm having with you, Jim, for people to reach out to me directly with any questions they have. My email is my first name, Carlos@elation.com for any one of those options that we've discussed.
Jim Trounson:
Well, Carlos, thank you very much for this podcast. And I'm awfully happy to have you and Elation as part of our Medvale community. Thank you very much.
Carlos Arce:
Thanks, Jim. It's been a pleasure. It really has. I appreciate all the questions and a chance to connect with your audience.
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