Topics: 

Leading a Patient Safety Culture: Beyond the Statistics
The ever increasing demands of leadership have not allowed today’s leaders the luxury of time needed to step back and look at the ‘big picture’. The biggest failure of all has proven to be the most critical: a failure of perception. Culture has repeatedly been identified as the greatest barrier to patient safety (IHI). What is this phenomenon that travels as a powerful undercurrent in organizations? And how can leaders’ un-mine and control an invisible force?

Using Professor Diamond’s framework (Collapse), for “How group decisions fail”, this presentation offers a fresh and fascinating look at the hospital safety culture in light of sociology. Patient safety can never be achieved as a top-down driven initiative. Safety is a core value. In this session, leaders will learn how to identify their culture beyond the statistics and sustain the value system and behaviors critical to keeping our patients safe.

Objectives

1. List three reasons why groups fail at decision making
   2. Discuss the impact of perception on patient safety and quality care 
   3. Identify and apply two major concepts that would provide perspective and power to leadership
   4. Understand how to maximize power and resources within a human institution. 
   5. Describe two specific actions that you personally can adopt now to lead a patient safety culture.

(Level: Geared from front line managers to board members)

 

Healing Nurse-to-Nurse Hostility & Creating Healthy Relationships
The expression “Nurses eat their young” is so far removed from our idea of the caring and nurturing nurse that we shudder to think it could possibly be true.  Bur the truth is, nurses are hurting each other.  Stories from the ‘front line’ cannot be ignored.  These stories are the voices of nurses telling the world about their experiences.  In addition, research shows that 60% of newly registered nurses leave their first position within six months because of some form of abuse from a co-worker.  The first step to healing our relationships is the most difficult: to recognize and openly discuss the problem.  Only by understanding the origin and reasons for our behaviors can we even begin to create the healing environment that is so desperately needed in nursing- for ourselves, as well as our patients.

Objectives

1.  Acknowledge that nurse to nurse hostility is a serious problem.
2. Explain why nurses experience un-caring behaviors from their peers.
3. List one action that you can take to build a culture of healthy relationships and/or decrease horizontal hostility in the workplace. 

 

Creating Community: The Key to Recruitment and Retention
In a world characterized by increasing complexity and diversity, in which many are feeling greater alienation, the workplace is a fertile common ground.  High-tech companies not only recognize that people are their most important resource, but also strive to create an environment in which their employees can find personal value and meaning in their work.  The health care industry lags behind and the shortage of nurses is providing additional challenges.  We can measure our effectiveness as nurse managers by the quality of our relationships.

(Kathleen managed a 57 bed Orthopedic and Spine unit in Seattle, Washington.  For the last three quarters of her tenure,  her unit was in the top 10% of patient, physician and employee satisfaction.  With a turnover rate of less than 3% and a waiting list for employment on the unit for over three years, Kathleen’s success is dependent upon one thing: building a community of nurses who feel that they belong and who care about each other.)

Objectives

1. Recognize the impact of building community on retention and recruitment.
2. Define community in relationships to the nursing profession.
3. List two specific activities that will promote community on your unit.
4. Describe why the art of nursing flourishes in a community setting.

 

About Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN:

Before turning to healthcare as a career in 1994, Kathleen Bartholomew held positions in marketing, business, communications and teaching.  It was these experiences that allowed her to look at nursing from a different perspective and speak poignantly to the issues that effect nurses today.

 

Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN has been a national speaker for the nursing profession for the past eleven years.  As the manager of a 57 bed surgical unit in Seattle, Kathleen quickly recognized that creating a culture where staff felt a sense of belonging was critical to retention.  Throughout Swedish Medical Center Kathleen spoke to the numerous factors which propel our society toward isolation and encouraged staff to connect and value one another.  During her tenure as manager, staff, physician and patient satisfaction improved significantly as she implemented her down-to earth strategies for creating community. Despite the nursing shortage, Kathleen could always depend on a waiting list of nurses for her unit.

 

Kathleen’s Bachelor’s Degree is in Liberal Arts with a strong emphasis on Sociology. This background laid the foundation for her to correctly identify the norms and particular to healthcare – specifically physician-nurse relationships and nurse-to-nurse hostility. For her Master’s Thesis she authored “Speak Your Truth: Proven Strategies for Effective Nurse-Physician Communication” which is the only book to date which addresses physician-nurse issues.  In December of 2005, Kathleen resigned her position as manager in order to write a second book on horizontal violence in nursing. The expression, “why nurses eat their young” has existed for many years in the nursing profession (and has troubled many in the profession).  In her book, “Ending Nurse to Nurse Hostility” (2006), Kathleen offers the first comprehensive and compassionate look at the etiology, impact and solutions to horizontal violence. Kathleen won the best media depiction of nursing for her Op Editorial in the Seattle P.I. and in 2010 she was nominated by Health Leaders Media as one of the top 20 people changing healthcare in America.

 

Kathleen’s passion for creating healthy work environments is infectious. She is an expert on hospital culture and speaks internationally to hospital boards, the military, leadership and staff about safety, communication, cultural change and power.  With her husband, John J. Nance, she co-authored, “Charting the Course: Launching Patient-Centric Healthcare.” From the bedside to the boardroom Kathleen applies research to practice with humor and an ethical call to excellence. Everyone that hears her is inspired.