Blog & News

At Practicing Excellence, we aim as a team to bring the best of each other through our collective purpose, transparent connection, and being truly “in this together.” Our Meet The PE Team ongoing series will introduce you to the creative and authentic folks who are behind the work. . .

Leaders, care teams, and healthcare organizations that can give and receive feedback possess enormous capacity to learn and improve quickly and continuously. But it’s clear that giving and receiving feedback can make even the most confident of us bristle in defense if we’re not used to how beneficial feedback is when it’s done the right way. . .

Communication within and across care teams has the potential to get pretty complicated and confusing. Well-intended team members with poor communication techniques often can get in the way of otherwise very dedicated work. . .

When the success of leading organizational change is predicated upon healthy connection and communication between clinical and non-clinical teams, dyadic relationships become essential for advancing effective collaboration. Tom Tull, Vice President and Chief Experience Officer at Ballad Health, knows firsthand what this effort looks like. . .

“As we’re creating content for hospitalists, it’s really important to me for those who are looking for this information to know that they are getting it from someone who does the exact same work that they do. I am a clinical hospitalist. I see patients all day, every day. . .

Imagine this scenario: A physician walks into a patient’s room during morning rounds. The physician asks about how the patient is feeling, what’s planned for that day, and everything else that might be relevant. . .

Sharing patient experience data with physicians and teams across St. Joseph Health Medical Group proved to be a futile exercise . . .

Deploying a physician coaching initiative is an effective catalyst for driving transformational change and accelerating successful outcomes. To establish coaches who have culture-shifting impact, they must be an extension of leader messaging and...

Last week on August 12th and 13th the Practicing Excellence team gathered with partners and colleagues at our CONNECT Community Networking Event to learn from each other, exchange insights, advance organizational priorities, and build lasting...

In constantly evolving healthcare environments, physician leaders are key in managing change efforts, however, developing leaders across a large system can in itself be a difficult change to lead. Consequently, it’s important to recognize that...

Inspiring clinicians to engage in your patient experience improvement efforts is not only important, it is required to achieve results. Few healthcare leaders dispute this, but the effectiveness of getting this accomplished is inconsistent.  Over...

“I know you’re not a clinician, but I would like for you to formalize our Clinician Coaching Program and start shadowing and coaching clinicians at Sentara Medical Group.” I honestly thought I misheard this request from my director. I immediately wondered. . .

When organizational transformation happens in partnership with physicians, patient experience advancements can take great strides forward among clinical teams. At JPS Health Network this became a reality as the organization translated an...

March 20th, 2020 is National Doctor’s Day. Many organizations plan for a special recognition of their care team leaders by giving them a baseball cap, a thermos or a blanket with the organizational logo on it. These were the last three Doctor’s Day...

As physicians grow increasingly overwhelmed by the focus on their patient experience scores and online reputation, the need for shifting the conversation with toward progressive learning and supporting reward and recognition is more urgent than...

With both increased transparency and reimbursement tied to the patient experience, organizations have focused on improving outcomes for a long time. Despite significant investment, as a whole, the industry's actual improvement isn’t very...

Our mission is to improve the clinician experience through world class skill-building solutions that enhance patient connection, fuel team collaboration, and develop leaders who inspire change. With great excitement, we announce the addition...

The changes to healthcare—not just in policy, regulation, and payment but also the tectonic shifts in how physicians define, evaluate, report and are paid for care—can make us all feel like we’re on a runaway train. Alongside the runaway train are...

Jill Kruse, MD, doesn't see empathy as another thing to do, but as an essential ingredient for good medicine. Sure, many studies have shown that empathy is directly related to patient satisfaction, adherence to medical...

 “Despite having incredibly meaningful jobs, doctors are increasingly unhappy in their work,” explains Dr. Paddy Barrett, Cardiologist at St. Vincent’s University Hospital County Dublin, Ireland and faculty member of the Clinician Experience...

Phil Yphantides, MD, or “Dr. Phil” as patients often call him, shows us just how potent self-discovery and change can be when we find ourselves in a challenging situation. Being in a challenging situation you’re not exactly...

Spend a few minutes with Wendy Woods-Swafford MD., M.P.H., and you quickly sense just how deep her commitment runs. For her, being a physician isn’t just about doing the job well, it’s more about the crucial role a physician...

One of the first things Nick Fustino, MD, said to us was, “The first time I heard the term ‘patient satisfaction,’ I thought wait a minute…I have to cure cancer and make patients happy while I do it?” Is there a physician in...

The increased chatter we’re all hearing around engaging patients (AKA: “How in the world can I get this patient to take control of their own care -- lose weight,  stay on their medication, etc.?”) got me thinking: “Where does patient...

Of course, patients want a clinically capable physician, but have no idea what we are really doing on the technical side. “I initially thought if I just focused on the medical part – their specific diagnosis and treatment...

The more we listen to our clinician colleagues around the country, the more we’re hearing how many feel isolated, even lonely. In the research we recently conducted, one in three clinicians report a lack of collegiality in...

For this Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist, a physician’s technical skills matter greatly. But Dr. Rokes believes there is much more to practicing medicine than what’s in the textbooks. "We have to know what we're doing, but...

One of our members said it best, "As physicians, we are used to being in the role of rescuer and it can be difficult to ask for help, but we are less effective in our jobs if we are struggling. As they say on airplanes, put...

Many clinicians seemingly develop an almost instantaneous allergic reaction to the term “resiliency training,” while others seem to find great utility in the effort. Aside from the polarizing terminology, discussing how to build resiliency is...

Successful leaders often talk about how the first person you should lead is yourself. But, what does that actually look like and how can this help clinicians lead teams more effectively?  Winston Churchill said, ”If you seek to lead, invest 50% of...