Healthcare is one of the most controversial social topics across America. Numerous debates and widely diverse opinions exist on the solutions needed to support a service industry that mandates excellent patient experience, quality of care, and healthy patient outcomes.
A familiar nursery rhyme is a natural analogy to describe the emotions of healthcare stakeholders and leaders. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. The entire king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. In this rhyme, Humpty Dumpty is depicted as an egg-like character. A dropped egg provides a vivid image of a thin shell body fractured into multiple pieces. Unfortunately, this is the way many healthcare stakeholders and policymakers feel about America’s healthcare system. It is fractured, splintered, and disjointed.
Call for Transformation
With the heated debate over America’s healthcare reform, transformation has become unavoidable. Transformation is never simple, particularly in an industry that has been described by many leadership management experts as one of the most complex industries to lead. Today there is a public cry for leaders to initiate wide-scale transformation from our traditional healthcare environment into a new innovative culture to meet modern challenges.
Then the question of how comes into play. How do we begin to change our traditional cultural norms and create a foundational culture that will recruit and retain highly trained healthcare workers; be able to sustain the winds of change, while creating a high-quality service center of excellence?
Value Shift
This required a transformational work environment that embraces cultural shifts in values. Prioritizing values that focus on the greatest asset within healthcare, the healthcare worker. We must put the oxygen mask on the healthcare worker first, so they are able to put it on the patient. Authentic culture transformation starts with valuing the well-being of the employees within the organization. Healthcare and the values the culture represents have been entrenched for many years. If cultural shifts are desired, it will require a new way of thinking.
Proven and tested transformational leadership and organizational foundational values cultivate the ground for transformation. Laying this ground for cultural transformation cannot be skipped or taken for granted. While there may be an eagerness for transformation steps to begin, omission of any of these foundational steps will jeopardize sustainability of culture excellence in an organization. Attempting to skip the establishment of core organizational values will lead the efforts of cultural transformation process into more of the flavor of the month or shooting star initiative. Ignoring cultural factors’ importance will continue to propel a poor functioning work structure. Transformational healthcare culture of the future will be proactive in establishing strong values that will help prevent the fall of Humpty Dumpty, coupled with highly reliable teams ready to put him back together again.
