Selected Podcast
Reducing Stigma: People Matter, Words Matter
The American Hospital Association has launched its new People Matter, Words Matter poster series to help combat behavioral health stigma in health care settings by encouraging providers to adopt respectful, patient-centered language. In the first poster, Linden Oaks Behavioral Health provided information on using people-first language, which primarily acknowledges the person rather than the illness or disability. This podcast discusses the first poster in the series.
Featuring:
Edward-Elmhurst Health. Responsible for strategic development, execution and oversight for the Behavioral Health Service Line for Edward-Elmhurst Health across all care settings as well as physician services. The team is responsible for building and managing a clinically relevant and fiscally prudent organization to meet the current and future mental health needs of the community in the Edward-Elmhurst System. The focus for behavioral health is breaking stigma around mental illness and substance abuse by creating local access to services via access points to outpatient care, primary care integration, and support to the emergency departments and medical floors. Approaches to care based on quality and outcomes and to begin advancing care delivery with on-line technology. Linden Oaks has seven Joint Commission Disease Specific Certifications including depression, bipolar, dementia, eating disorders, chemical dependency, anxiety, and self injury. Ms. Sharp has completed speaking engagements across the country relative to the success of creating access and delivering quality behavioral health services.
Prior Experience
The vast majority of Ms. Sharp’s career has been with Edward-Elmhurst Health. Throughout the years, she and her team have focused on developing a provider network which currently accounts for over 50 providers and 50 counselors in the ambulatory setting. In so doing, Linden Oaks has expanded to over 100 inpatient beds and 7 outpatient locations, treating over 600 individuals daily. Ms. Sharp has worked as a financial analyst for both hospital and managed care settings.
Education, Awards and Professional Affiliations Ms. Sharp earned her master’s degree in Business Administration and Finance from DePaul University, a Bachelor of Science degree in community health and health administration from the University of Illinois. Ms. Sharp is a Fellow in of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Ms. Sharp serves on the Illinois Hospital Associations Behavioral Health Consortium as past Chairman. She serves on the National Association of Behavioral Health Committee for Behavioral Health Services within General Healthcare Systems. She is a recipient of the 2017 Women of Distinction Award from the Western Suburb Magazine. She received the 2013 American College of Healthcare Executives Chicagoland Chapter Early Careerist Recognition. Ms. Sharp serves on several local boards to support her community.
Gina Sharp, FACHE, MBA | Kelly Ryan, PsyD
Gina Sharp, FACHE, MBA is President, Linden Oaks Behavioral Health ServicesEdward-Elmhurst Health. Responsible for strategic development, execution and oversight for the Behavioral Health Service Line for Edward-Elmhurst Health across all care settings as well as physician services. The team is responsible for building and managing a clinically relevant and fiscally prudent organization to meet the current and future mental health needs of the community in the Edward-Elmhurst System. The focus for behavioral health is breaking stigma around mental illness and substance abuse by creating local access to services via access points to outpatient care, primary care integration, and support to the emergency departments and medical floors. Approaches to care based on quality and outcomes and to begin advancing care delivery with on-line technology. Linden Oaks has seven Joint Commission Disease Specific Certifications including depression, bipolar, dementia, eating disorders, chemical dependency, anxiety, and self injury. Ms. Sharp has completed speaking engagements across the country relative to the success of creating access and delivering quality behavioral health services.
Prior Experience
The vast majority of Ms. Sharp’s career has been with Edward-Elmhurst Health. Throughout the years, she and her team have focused on developing a provider network which currently accounts for over 50 providers and 50 counselors in the ambulatory setting. In so doing, Linden Oaks has expanded to over 100 inpatient beds and 7 outpatient locations, treating over 600 individuals daily. Ms. Sharp has worked as a financial analyst for both hospital and managed care settings.
Education, Awards and Professional Affiliations Ms. Sharp earned her master’s degree in Business Administration and Finance from DePaul University, a Bachelor of Science degree in community health and health administration from the University of Illinois. Ms. Sharp is a Fellow in of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Ms. Sharp serves on the Illinois Hospital Associations Behavioral Health Consortium as past Chairman. She serves on the National Association of Behavioral Health Committee for Behavioral Health Services within General Healthcare Systems. She is a recipient of the 2017 Women of Distinction Award from the Western Suburb Magazine. She received the 2013 American College of Healthcare Executives Chicagoland Chapter Early Careerist Recognition. Ms. Sharp serves on several local boards to support her community.
Director of Social Services and Doctoral Training, Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services
Edward-Elmhurst Health
Dr. Ryan is a licensed clinical psychologist who oversees the quality of therapeutic services offered at Linden Oaks Hospital including clinical therapy, discharge planning, and rehab services. She also oversees the doctoral training department for psychology and she and her team hope to achieve accreditation from the American Psychological Association this summer. Dr. Ryan has championed the Healing Team, a group of mental health professionals who provide emotional support to frontline workers during the pandemic. Dr. Ryan is the chair of the Healthy Minds Committee, which focuses on the mental wellness of all employees at Edward-Elmhurst Health and recently began overseeing the Employee Support Coordinators who will offer ongoing resources and support to staff in the EEHealth System.
Prior Experience
Before joining the EEHealth team in 2012, Dr. Ryan worked in psychiatric settings across the Chicagoland area, as well as on the East Coast. Her previous experience includes work with children, adolescents and adults in a variety of inpatient, shelter, partial hospitalization, community mental health, and private practice settings. Her favorite thing about working in this field is the ability to see individuals go from some of the most challenging times of their lives to thriving. She believes compassionate care and human connection are the first steps in this recovery process and is so proud to be at Linden Oaks overseeing a team of the most compassionate people she has ever had the honor to work with.
Education, Awards and Professional Affiliations
Dr. Ryan earned a Doctor of Clinical Psychology degree from Adler University, a Master of Arts degree in Clinical Psychology with a Counseling Specialization from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ryan is a Member in of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Edward-Elmhurst Health
Dr. Ryan is a licensed clinical psychologist who oversees the quality of therapeutic services offered at Linden Oaks Hospital including clinical therapy, discharge planning, and rehab services. She also oversees the doctoral training department for psychology and she and her team hope to achieve accreditation from the American Psychological Association this summer. Dr. Ryan has championed the Healing Team, a group of mental health professionals who provide emotional support to frontline workers during the pandemic. Dr. Ryan is the chair of the Healthy Minds Committee, which focuses on the mental wellness of all employees at Edward-Elmhurst Health and recently began overseeing the Employee Support Coordinators who will offer ongoing resources and support to staff in the EEHealth System.
Prior Experience
Before joining the EEHealth team in 2012, Dr. Ryan worked in psychiatric settings across the Chicagoland area, as well as on the East Coast. Her previous experience includes work with children, adolescents and adults in a variety of inpatient, shelter, partial hospitalization, community mental health, and private practice settings. Her favorite thing about working in this field is the ability to see individuals go from some of the most challenging times of their lives to thriving. She believes compassionate care and human connection are the first steps in this recovery process and is so proud to be at Linden Oaks overseeing a team of the most compassionate people she has ever had the honor to work with.
Education, Awards and Professional Affiliations
Dr. Ryan earned a Doctor of Clinical Psychology degree from Adler University, a Master of Arts degree in Clinical Psychology with a Counseling Specialization from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ryan is a Member in of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Transcription:
Michael Carrese: Welcome to the ASHRM podcast made possible by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to support efforts to advance safe and trusted health care through enterprise risk management. You can visit ASHRM.org/membership to learn more and become an ASHRM member. I'm Michael Carrese.
And we're going to start our program today with a pretty surprising and sobering statistic. More than half of people with mental illness in the United States don't receive help for their disorders. And according to the American Psychiatric Association, a chief cause is that people avoid or delay seeking treatment due to concerns about being treated differently or fears of losing their jobs and livelihood.
So obviously, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination against people with mental illness is still very much a problem, but there's good news on this front. The American Hospital Association has launched its new People Matter, Words Matter poster series to help combat behavioral health stigma in healthcare settings by encouraging providers to adopt a respectful patient-centered language.
In the first poster, Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services, a part of Edward-Elmhurst Health, provided information on using people-first language, which primarily acknowledges the person rather than the illness or disability. And we have two people involved in the project with us today to provide details. Gina Sharp is President of Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services, and Dr. Kelly Ryan is Director of Social Services and Doctoral Training. And welcome to you both.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Thank you.
Dr. Gina Sharp: Thank you.
Michael Carrese: So first, I wanted to start by having you tell us a little bit about your professional backgrounds and your current roles at Linden Oaks. And Gina, maybe you can start.
Dr. Gina Sharp: Great. Thank you, Michael. So I'm Gina Sharp and my background is in community health and then went on to get some further education and MBA in finance. I'm also a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and I am the President for Linden Oaks Hospital, but also am a system executive representing behavioral health across the Edward-Elmhurst Health Care organization.
And throughout my career here at Edward-Elmhurst, one of my priorities has been to integrate behavioral health care with medical care. So addressing behavioral health has been really embedded throughout our system.
Michael Carrese: Great. And Dr. Ryan, what about you?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: I am the Director of Social Services and Doctoral Training here at Linden Oaks. I've been here for about nine years. I oversee our social work, clinical therapy, rehab services and our psychological training department. Before my work at Linden Oaks, I've worked at several hospital systems in the Chicago land area.
Michael Carrese: Well, good. It's nice to know what folks are bringing to the table before we get underway with the substance. And really the first question is what initiated this work? Why did you guys get involved in addressing this topic? And Gina, why don't you start?
Dr. Gina Sharp: That'd be great. Thank you. So the vision for Edward-Elmhurst Health Care is to transform the healthcare experience, safe, seamless, and personnel. And when we think through that vision, patient-first language is critical to all three arms of this vision. At Linden Oaks, we believed for many years in delivering patient-centered care.
However, there have been many meetings in the past where physicians, leaders and staff were using judgmental language either in conversation to the patient in the back room and even in documentation. Additionally, we really wanted to focus on improving our documentation, really related to medical necessity as well, too.
So combining education in a series format to ensure we advocate for our patients in a nonjudgmental fashion really became a priority. As we embarked on our three-year strategic plan, we knew we really wanted to focus on making this change. And at the time, the 21st Century Cures Act wasn't even on our radar, we just felt it was the right thing to do.
And thankfully, we've been focusing on this initiative for a couple of years now because our patients are able to read their notes through open notes in our electronic medical record. And now that we have gone live with open notes, we've had a few instances where clinicians have documented language that patients have felt misunderstood and having an educational platform to go back and give them coaching on what the right language to use is, has been really important in ensuring that we're really delivering personal care and removing that stigma behind mental illness.
Michael Carrese: Right. Dr. Ryan, what would you add to that?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Yeah, I've been passionate about this topic for a long time. And a lot of people don't know this idea of people-first language, has been around for a very long time. It's actually been around since the '60s, and there's been a lot of work by advocacy groups for disabilities. In the '80s, it was added into some government practices. And it's just been a huge initiative towards compassionate care towards patients.
The American Medical Association has actually required people-first language in medical journals since about 2007. And in my training and my doctoral program, we learned this concept. But I did notice, you know, when you get out into the real world, in clinical practice while we're writing about our patients in this way, we're writing in people-first language and describing them as people first with an illness or a disability second. There's a big difference between how we talk about them behind closed doors or even how we write about people in their charts. And the way that we speak about people to one another or the way that we write about people actually impacts their treatment outcomes. So it's really been my mission to advocate for this people-first language, so that we can promote better medical outcomes.
Michael Carrese: So break it down a little bit. I mean, in your own setting there at Linden Oaks, how did you go about developing these materials and doing the coaching that you referenced, Gina?
Dr. Gina Sharp: Sure, absolutely. And I really think that this has to be driven as well by senior executives to embrace and endorse this cultural change, to promote it, to educate as well as to hold people accountable, to make sure that they're making those changes as well. And so we really started and embraced our leadership team on this concept and then identified who would really be our champion to help educate and promote this education to our team members. And in our case, we have Dr. Kelly Ryan here who is incredibly passionate about this topic and really worked on developing the curriculum to educate.
We then really focused on having some mandatory town halls. So we committed to our team by freeing them up to come to the educational sessions and dialogue about it because it's not just one-way communication. It's how do you help interpret and dialogue about this topic as well with our teams. And then we also broke it down and had some special meetings with our physicians, whether it was through our medical staff quarterly or at other provider meetings as well. And then I would say that Dr. Kelly Ryan really did the bulk of the lifting here in terms of rolling out the educational platform.
Michael Carrese: So, yes, Dr. Ryan, will you tell us some details about that?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Yeah. Along with the educational trainings, a lot of this was kind of boots on the ground, you know. With the leaders, whenever we have staff in a treatment team meeting, you know, if someone is describing another person, for example, as an addict, instead of a person with addiction or instead of that human that we're treating, we have a way of just kind of calling each other out here.
And something that we did notice with our staff is a lot of times people use diagnosis-first language or labeling, and this sort of judgmental language when they're becoming a little burned out. So we do encourage our staff to kind of evoke empathy in one another and say, "Hey, you know, that person's been through a lot. Let's talk about what they might be going through." Or really encouraging one another to take a break and just take some time for themselves so that they can kind of get away from this labeling language that we can use.
Michael Carrese: So I believe I heard one of you say that it's been, you know, a couple of years or at least a little while since you implemented this. What are you seeing? What's the impact, Gina?
Dr. Gina Sharp: Yes. So, you know, what I am seeing throughout our culture is that patients and families are really feeling the difference in how we care for them. And from a big picture perspective, our emergency departments have individuals coming to them for psychiatric care. They're coming, they're walking into our hospital, in our facility. And when individuals need inpatient care, they will wait until we have a bed available for them to come to our organization.
And I do believe that we're viewed as a destination place for individuals to come and receive their behavioral health needs because of the fact that we do treat our patients with human kindness, not only in our actions, but also in our language that we use towards them and write about them.
Michael Carrese: And Dr. Ryan, I want to get to the work you've done with the American Hospital Association on the People Matter, Words Matter poster series. Tell us about that and how that rollout's going.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Yeah. So we just took this concept of people-first language that we've been unrolling at Linden Oaks. And we created a great poster Words Matter, people-first language, and it just gives some great examples of how to refer to people as a person first. And it's pretty simple. So really, it could go with any medical diagnosis. Instead of calling someone a diabetic, call them a person with diabetes, right? Label them as a person first.
When you think of using that label first, all kinds of judgments and really stigma can come to your mind. I'm sure when I describe a diabetic to you, you might think of someone who has trouble managing their blood sugar, maybe struggles with obesity. But if I describe Jane, you know, a working mother who struggles with diabetes, you're more likely to be empathic towards that person. So I've been working with the AHA on a poster and some blogs, really just to simplify how to do this, because it's not that hard and it makes such a big difference.
Michael Carrese: What do you think the obstacle has been? I mean, you've talked about it's been embedded in training for quite some time now and it's in the literature and it's, you know, pervasive. But in practice, it's a little harder to make it happen. How come?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: I think there's several factors that go into that to be honest. I think it's hard to change an overall culture. I think a lot of our more experienced physicians and nurses are used to a hospital culture where we did label people by their diagnosis. Another thing that can contribute is time. Our brains have a way of creating shortcuts. And I think when there are all of these regulatory requirements, it's hard to have the time to spend with our patients and to look at every Person as an individual. But we need to make the effort. Because if we were the one sitting in the chair in the doctor's office, we would want to be looked at as a whole person and not as a label.
Dr. Gina Sharp: You know, and to add onto that a little bit, I would also say that when you think about TV shows, movies that people watch, our culture is really embedded in how somebody with a mental illness may be described. And so trying to overcome those barriers as well that our staff and our physicians watch at home in their personal lives and then breaking that cycle here in the hospital to really focus on the person is really important.
And so I think really focusing on person-centered language is critical, one, not just for our patients who are receiving the care, but also for those who may feel the stigma that is behind mental illness and trying to break that so that they could feel it's important for them to receive care and feel good about receiving the care when they're ready to take that step.
Michael Carrese: So as we wrap up here, I wanted to get both of you to weigh in on how you would advise others to start on this work and particularly keeping in mind what the barriers were that you experienced. And Gina, you want to start?
Dr. Gina Sharp: Sure. I would recommend have the discussions. The first step is bringing it forward at your leadership meeting and talking about it and making sure that your leaders are on board with this change as well. And then from there, you're able to permeate that down to the rest of your teams and your staff and physicians, because the buy-in at the higher level is there to also help people stay on track and be held accountable and have those coaching moments with the team members as well.
Michael Carrese: Dr. Ryan?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: I agree with that. And then I would also say for the direct line staff, really connecting to the why. You know, most of us came into this field because we are empathic, compassionate individually who wanted to help people. And the labels and the stigmatizing is really the opposite of why we came into this field. And so looking at people as a whole person first is really just the right thing to do. So I think when people think about that and understand that, they're more likely to put in the effort of why we might people-first language and provide compassionate care.
Michael Carrese: Right. And I'm sure it matters to outcomes too if people are feeling secure and not judged.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Absolutely. There are actually a lot of studies on that, that the physician's and the staff's attitudes impact patient outcomes.
Michael Carrese: I'm afraid we're going to have to wrap it up there. But I want to thank you both very much for joining us and providing all of this great wisdom for folks. We've been talking to Dr. Kelly Ryan and Gina Sharp, both of Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services, a part of the Edward-Elmhurst Health system. Thanks very much.
Dr. Gina Sharp: Thank you.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Thank you so much.
Michael Carrese: For more information on the People Matter, Words Matter poster series, you can go to www.aha.org/peoplematterwordsmatter. This podcast is made possible by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to support efforts to advance safe and trusted healthcare through enterprise risk management. You can visit ASHRM.org/membership to learn more and become an ASHRM member. I'm Michael Carrese. Thanks for listening.
Michael Carrese: Welcome to the ASHRM podcast made possible by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to support efforts to advance safe and trusted health care through enterprise risk management. You can visit ASHRM.org/membership to learn more and become an ASHRM member. I'm Michael Carrese.
And we're going to start our program today with a pretty surprising and sobering statistic. More than half of people with mental illness in the United States don't receive help for their disorders. And according to the American Psychiatric Association, a chief cause is that people avoid or delay seeking treatment due to concerns about being treated differently or fears of losing their jobs and livelihood.
So obviously, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination against people with mental illness is still very much a problem, but there's good news on this front. The American Hospital Association has launched its new People Matter, Words Matter poster series to help combat behavioral health stigma in healthcare settings by encouraging providers to adopt a respectful patient-centered language.
In the first poster, Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services, a part of Edward-Elmhurst Health, provided information on using people-first language, which primarily acknowledges the person rather than the illness or disability. And we have two people involved in the project with us today to provide details. Gina Sharp is President of Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services, and Dr. Kelly Ryan is Director of Social Services and Doctoral Training. And welcome to you both.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Thank you.
Dr. Gina Sharp: Thank you.
Michael Carrese: So first, I wanted to start by having you tell us a little bit about your professional backgrounds and your current roles at Linden Oaks. And Gina, maybe you can start.
Dr. Gina Sharp: Great. Thank you, Michael. So I'm Gina Sharp and my background is in community health and then went on to get some further education and MBA in finance. I'm also a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and I am the President for Linden Oaks Hospital, but also am a system executive representing behavioral health across the Edward-Elmhurst Health Care organization.
And throughout my career here at Edward-Elmhurst, one of my priorities has been to integrate behavioral health care with medical care. So addressing behavioral health has been really embedded throughout our system.
Michael Carrese: Great. And Dr. Ryan, what about you?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: I am the Director of Social Services and Doctoral Training here at Linden Oaks. I've been here for about nine years. I oversee our social work, clinical therapy, rehab services and our psychological training department. Before my work at Linden Oaks, I've worked at several hospital systems in the Chicago land area.
Michael Carrese: Well, good. It's nice to know what folks are bringing to the table before we get underway with the substance. And really the first question is what initiated this work? Why did you guys get involved in addressing this topic? And Gina, why don't you start?
Dr. Gina Sharp: That'd be great. Thank you. So the vision for Edward-Elmhurst Health Care is to transform the healthcare experience, safe, seamless, and personnel. And when we think through that vision, patient-first language is critical to all three arms of this vision. At Linden Oaks, we believed for many years in delivering patient-centered care.
However, there have been many meetings in the past where physicians, leaders and staff were using judgmental language either in conversation to the patient in the back room and even in documentation. Additionally, we really wanted to focus on improving our documentation, really related to medical necessity as well, too.
So combining education in a series format to ensure we advocate for our patients in a nonjudgmental fashion really became a priority. As we embarked on our three-year strategic plan, we knew we really wanted to focus on making this change. And at the time, the 21st Century Cures Act wasn't even on our radar, we just felt it was the right thing to do.
And thankfully, we've been focusing on this initiative for a couple of years now because our patients are able to read their notes through open notes in our electronic medical record. And now that we have gone live with open notes, we've had a few instances where clinicians have documented language that patients have felt misunderstood and having an educational platform to go back and give them coaching on what the right language to use is, has been really important in ensuring that we're really delivering personal care and removing that stigma behind mental illness.
Michael Carrese: Right. Dr. Ryan, what would you add to that?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Yeah, I've been passionate about this topic for a long time. And a lot of people don't know this idea of people-first language, has been around for a very long time. It's actually been around since the '60s, and there's been a lot of work by advocacy groups for disabilities. In the '80s, it was added into some government practices. And it's just been a huge initiative towards compassionate care towards patients.
The American Medical Association has actually required people-first language in medical journals since about 2007. And in my training and my doctoral program, we learned this concept. But I did notice, you know, when you get out into the real world, in clinical practice while we're writing about our patients in this way, we're writing in people-first language and describing them as people first with an illness or a disability second. There's a big difference between how we talk about them behind closed doors or even how we write about people in their charts. And the way that we speak about people to one another or the way that we write about people actually impacts their treatment outcomes. So it's really been my mission to advocate for this people-first language, so that we can promote better medical outcomes.
Michael Carrese: So break it down a little bit. I mean, in your own setting there at Linden Oaks, how did you go about developing these materials and doing the coaching that you referenced, Gina?
Dr. Gina Sharp: Sure, absolutely. And I really think that this has to be driven as well by senior executives to embrace and endorse this cultural change, to promote it, to educate as well as to hold people accountable, to make sure that they're making those changes as well. And so we really started and embraced our leadership team on this concept and then identified who would really be our champion to help educate and promote this education to our team members. And in our case, we have Dr. Kelly Ryan here who is incredibly passionate about this topic and really worked on developing the curriculum to educate.
We then really focused on having some mandatory town halls. So we committed to our team by freeing them up to come to the educational sessions and dialogue about it because it's not just one-way communication. It's how do you help interpret and dialogue about this topic as well with our teams. And then we also broke it down and had some special meetings with our physicians, whether it was through our medical staff quarterly or at other provider meetings as well. And then I would say that Dr. Kelly Ryan really did the bulk of the lifting here in terms of rolling out the educational platform.
Michael Carrese: So, yes, Dr. Ryan, will you tell us some details about that?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Yeah. Along with the educational trainings, a lot of this was kind of boots on the ground, you know. With the leaders, whenever we have staff in a treatment team meeting, you know, if someone is describing another person, for example, as an addict, instead of a person with addiction or instead of that human that we're treating, we have a way of just kind of calling each other out here.
And something that we did notice with our staff is a lot of times people use diagnosis-first language or labeling, and this sort of judgmental language when they're becoming a little burned out. So we do encourage our staff to kind of evoke empathy in one another and say, "Hey, you know, that person's been through a lot. Let's talk about what they might be going through." Or really encouraging one another to take a break and just take some time for themselves so that they can kind of get away from this labeling language that we can use.
Michael Carrese: So I believe I heard one of you say that it's been, you know, a couple of years or at least a little while since you implemented this. What are you seeing? What's the impact, Gina?
Dr. Gina Sharp: Yes. So, you know, what I am seeing throughout our culture is that patients and families are really feeling the difference in how we care for them. And from a big picture perspective, our emergency departments have individuals coming to them for psychiatric care. They're coming, they're walking into our hospital, in our facility. And when individuals need inpatient care, they will wait until we have a bed available for them to come to our organization.
And I do believe that we're viewed as a destination place for individuals to come and receive their behavioral health needs because of the fact that we do treat our patients with human kindness, not only in our actions, but also in our language that we use towards them and write about them.
Michael Carrese: And Dr. Ryan, I want to get to the work you've done with the American Hospital Association on the People Matter, Words Matter poster series. Tell us about that and how that rollout's going.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Yeah. So we just took this concept of people-first language that we've been unrolling at Linden Oaks. And we created a great poster Words Matter, people-first language, and it just gives some great examples of how to refer to people as a person first. And it's pretty simple. So really, it could go with any medical diagnosis. Instead of calling someone a diabetic, call them a person with diabetes, right? Label them as a person first.
When you think of using that label first, all kinds of judgments and really stigma can come to your mind. I'm sure when I describe a diabetic to you, you might think of someone who has trouble managing their blood sugar, maybe struggles with obesity. But if I describe Jane, you know, a working mother who struggles with diabetes, you're more likely to be empathic towards that person. So I've been working with the AHA on a poster and some blogs, really just to simplify how to do this, because it's not that hard and it makes such a big difference.
Michael Carrese: What do you think the obstacle has been? I mean, you've talked about it's been embedded in training for quite some time now and it's in the literature and it's, you know, pervasive. But in practice, it's a little harder to make it happen. How come?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: I think there's several factors that go into that to be honest. I think it's hard to change an overall culture. I think a lot of our more experienced physicians and nurses are used to a hospital culture where we did label people by their diagnosis. Another thing that can contribute is time. Our brains have a way of creating shortcuts. And I think when there are all of these regulatory requirements, it's hard to have the time to spend with our patients and to look at every Person as an individual. But we need to make the effort. Because if we were the one sitting in the chair in the doctor's office, we would want to be looked at as a whole person and not as a label.
Dr. Gina Sharp: You know, and to add onto that a little bit, I would also say that when you think about TV shows, movies that people watch, our culture is really embedded in how somebody with a mental illness may be described. And so trying to overcome those barriers as well that our staff and our physicians watch at home in their personal lives and then breaking that cycle here in the hospital to really focus on the person is really important.
And so I think really focusing on person-centered language is critical, one, not just for our patients who are receiving the care, but also for those who may feel the stigma that is behind mental illness and trying to break that so that they could feel it's important for them to receive care and feel good about receiving the care when they're ready to take that step.
Michael Carrese: So as we wrap up here, I wanted to get both of you to weigh in on how you would advise others to start on this work and particularly keeping in mind what the barriers were that you experienced. And Gina, you want to start?
Dr. Gina Sharp: Sure. I would recommend have the discussions. The first step is bringing it forward at your leadership meeting and talking about it and making sure that your leaders are on board with this change as well. And then from there, you're able to permeate that down to the rest of your teams and your staff and physicians, because the buy-in at the higher level is there to also help people stay on track and be held accountable and have those coaching moments with the team members as well.
Michael Carrese: Dr. Ryan?
Dr. Kelly Ryan: I agree with that. And then I would also say for the direct line staff, really connecting to the why. You know, most of us came into this field because we are empathic, compassionate individually who wanted to help people. And the labels and the stigmatizing is really the opposite of why we came into this field. And so looking at people as a whole person first is really just the right thing to do. So I think when people think about that and understand that, they're more likely to put in the effort of why we might people-first language and provide compassionate care.
Michael Carrese: Right. And I'm sure it matters to outcomes too if people are feeling secure and not judged.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Absolutely. There are actually a lot of studies on that, that the physician's and the staff's attitudes impact patient outcomes.
Michael Carrese: I'm afraid we're going to have to wrap it up there. But I want to thank you both very much for joining us and providing all of this great wisdom for folks. We've been talking to Dr. Kelly Ryan and Gina Sharp, both of Linden Oaks Behavioral Health Services, a part of the Edward-Elmhurst Health system. Thanks very much.
Dr. Gina Sharp: Thank you.
Dr. Kelly Ryan: Thank you so much.
Michael Carrese: For more information on the People Matter, Words Matter poster series, you can go to www.aha.org/peoplematterwordsmatter. This podcast is made possible by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to support efforts to advance safe and trusted healthcare through enterprise risk management. You can visit ASHRM.org/membership to learn more and become an ASHRM member. I'm Michael Carrese. Thanks for listening.