[To] practice medicine as an integrated team of compassionate,
multi-disciplinary physicians, scientists and allied health
professionals... - First Core Principle of the Mayo Clinic
While visiting a Florida medical center, one of the rising number that are actively planting a culture of loving care, I spoke with the manager of the nuclear medicine department. "Would you tell me some of your best health care experiences?" I asked. She scanned the ceiling, returned her eyes to mine, and said, "Well, once I worked for the Mayo Clinic," she replied in a reverent tone. "What was special about that?" I asked. "Well, you know, there's the Mayo Way. They indoctrinate you & everyone must perform within their protocols..."
The manager told me she left Mayo fifteen years before. I wondered
if she was still practicing the "Mayo Way" in her new
organization, but I was reluctant to ask. We are all influenced by the
culture of the place we work. If we live in a culture of loving
excellence, we will seek to practice in a way consistent with that
culture. If we live in a culture of mediocrity, there is a real risk we
will ease back to our lowest performance. Only a small percentage of us
are strong enough to sustain excellent performance in an environment of
mediocrity. After all, we don't want to stand out and be criticized as
oddballs by our co-workers.
So Mayo has their Way. What is the Way of your organization? What is your own personal Way?
You may have noticed that one of the first words in the first core principle of the Mayo Clinic is "compasionate." Many consider Mayo to be the finest medical center on earth. It turns out that this is not only about their clinical and academic excellence, but about a system of delivering care that is grounded in Love. Compassion is an essential part of the Mayo Way, and lives right next to Love's other key component, complete competence. There is nothing loving about being a clumsy and incompetent caregiver and competence matters little if it isn't matched with compassion.
The Chinese call the Way, the Tao. Tao signifies a particular discipline in the manner things are done. It touches not only what is done but how it is done. For an organization to develop a way of excellence, many things are necessary. But the two essentials are described accurately by Katie Skelton, Chief Nursing Officer at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, California. "Our key guideline in evaluating all our staff turns on two central principles - what is done and how it is done. We insist on excellence in both."
Ms. Skelton's comment may well be why St. Joe's has become a model of loving care in Southern California. Under the leadership of hospital CEO Larry Ainsworth and system CEO, Deborah Proctor, St. Joseph's has also strengthened patient satisfaction, employee morale, and clinical excellence. Increasingly, there is a St. Joe's Way of doing things. New employees need to learn this way in order to succeed in the culture of the organization.
This is the challenge for non-profit healthcare. Can CEOs and staff champion mission performance with the persistence, commitment, and compassion necessary to ingrain a Way so deep that everyone who touches the organization feels it?
The Mayo Clinic has shown the power of culture in their organization. But even in that system, as they would be the first to admit, there is room for improvement in the delivery of compassionate care by all staff all the time. That is the opportunity for America's thousands of community hospitals and millions of caregivers. These hospitals do not have to be the Mayo Clinic, and we do not have to be famous physicians. But each hospital and each person can strive to live out their own mission and vision to the fullest extent. And that can only be done by following the Tao of Loving Care.
