Cheryl Martin (Host): Coming up next, the seventh episode in a series of conversations with Dr. Marcelle Davis, Vice President and Chief Inclusive Excellence Officer at VCU Health, and team members throughout our healthcare system on their commitment to inclusive excellence and its impact on health.

Today, along with Dr. Davis, we are pleased to welcome Dr. Georgia McIntosh, Interim Chief of Patient Safety and Quality. The topic, How Focus on Patient Safety and Quality Impacts Our Patients and Community. This is Healthy with VCU Health. I'm Cheryl Martin. Dr. Davis, welcome back. We are at the seventh episode. Unbelievable! Please tell us why you chose today's guest.

Marcelle Davis, DSL: You know when you said the seventh episode, I was like, wait, what? Really? Time really does fly when we're having fun. And it feels like just yesterday we kicked off this podcast. But I'm so excited to be here with you and Dr. McIntosh today to promote patient safety awareness and to talk about the connection of patient safety with inclusive excellence.

Our health system has a commitment to delivering healthcare in a manner that respects the diversity and inclusivity with the full intent of ensuring an optimal patient experience and achieving better health outcomes for all. And that commitment really is grounded in our mission to preserve and restore the health of all people of Virginia and beyond.

Patient safety is at the core of everything we do in the health system. It drives our programs, it drives our interactions, and ultimately drives our patient results. And I'm excited for Dr. McIntosh to share all of the great work that she's doing.

Host: Dr. McIntosh, welcome. Tell us a bit about yourself and your role.

Georgia McIntosh, MD: Well, thank you. I am so excited to be here today and to speak about something that I'm really passionate about, and I am honored to be able to help advocate for and lead. So, I am a native Washingtonian, from D. C., but I herald from the West Indies. My parents were from the West Indies. I was born here but have that perspective and the reason I say that is that a lot of my family members really used the ability to help and to serve their community as the basis of all that they do. So, a lot of my family members came from a nursing background. And so, I think it was inherent that I do something in health care. 

Not sure that I knew what that was going to be when I was growing up, but I knew that that trajectory was going to be part of what I was going to do. And I'm just doing this work over years really just help me to solidify my commitment to our workforce, but as well as our patients to really get the best and the optimum health care for our community.

Host: Now, Dr. McIntosh, since this episode is about patient safety and quality, please explain what that entails and why it's so important. 

Georgia McIntosh, MD: I tell people, and I say this often, that without health, that really not much else matters and patient safety is at the forefront of that. My position is as a Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Officer, and really it starts with patient safety, because if we have good outcomes for some, but create unsafe or unintended outcomes for others, we're really not achieving what we want.

And so patient safety is really at the forefront of that. And it's one of those things that's a journey. You never achieve it. You never reach the end where you can say, yes, we've achieved optimum patient safety. So it's something that is front and center with whatever we do every single day, every patient interaction and really it spans if you are cleaning up something, if you are delivering medications, if you are counseling patients, it crosses everything that everybody does, as we are serving our community. 

Host: Dr. Davis, do you have anything to add to what Dr. McIntosh just said that speaks to the importance of providing equitable and inclusive patient safety? 

Marcelle Davis, DSL: You know, Cheryl, I agree with everything that Dr. McIntosh has already said. And I just want to add that anyone who knows me has probably heard me say that when a patient walks into a room, what happens next is inclusive excellence at work. It's literally inclusive excellence in motion. And I say that because we could never really simply look at a patient and know basic information about them, like gender, or race, or culture, religion, etc.

And so, what matters is that everyone have a fair chance to receive safe quality care so that they can get and stay as healthy as possible regardless of their background or circumstances. And yes, that includes equitable and inclusive patient safety. 

Host: Now, Dr. McIntosh, what is the impact of patient safety and quality on patients?

Georgia McIntosh, MD: I don't think that it can be emphasized enough. So, as we are striving to get the best outcomes for everybody, we want to make sure that people know that we have this preoccupation with failure. And when I say that it might seem as a negative, but really the goal is to be preoccupied with where we might not get good outcomes and then put things into place to prevent that from happening. So, it's that preoccupation with failure that's an uncomfortable feeling, but really gets us to being on the proactive rather than the defensive side of this healthcare journey. So really it might make people feel uncomfortable to start with; but once you're there, you say, yes, this is actually exactly where we need to be, feeling that discomfort so that you could really get to good outcomes overall. 

Host: So, Dr. McIntosh, what do you see as the main challenges or obstacles to providing optimal patient safety to patients? 

Georgia McIntosh, MD: As you can imagine, this can be sometimes really difficult and taxing work. And so, ensuring that team members really remain resilient and prioritize safety above everything else for excellence across the field can be really challenging. It's one of those things that we can be on the defensive end of this work.

And really that's not where we want to be. We really want to be in that proactive phase, that constant state of vigilance. And have this be seen as a positive thing rather than as a negative thing. So that keeping people resilient in doing this work, I think is one of the hardest parts of this, but it takes hard conversations, it takes sensitivity to work to people's emotional bandwidth as you're doing this, but as you do it, it just helps to foster that muscle and that commitment to serving our patients as well as serving each other.

And so, it takes that sensitivity, but then when people get it, then they really get it and then they fly with it. So, I think that initial resilience, fostering that resilience is probably the hardest part of doing this job. 

Host: Dr. Davis, tell us about your current plans or initiatives to work with Dr. McIntosh's team to ensure that patient safety is equitable and inclusive. 

Marcelle Davis, DSL: As Dr. McIntosh shared her response there just a little bit ago, I wrote a couple of words down, which really for me, solidifies the importance of this work. And that's commitment, sensitivity, courage, and intentionality. And so, as I think about those words, I think about one key area that Dr. McIntosh and I are working on, and that is partnering with Dr. McIntosh's team and our Chief of Health Impact to analyze data so we can better understand our patient population. In other words, who do we serve? It's one thing to say, meeting our patients’ needs, but if we don't actually know what the patients look like, then it's hard to answer that question.

And so, our plan is to marry that data with our patient experience survey responses. And together, the metrics will inform any opportunities that might exist. And then our goal at the end of the day is always to ensure all team members, regardless of their role, are fully equipped with the most effective tools and resources. Once we understand the opportunities that exist, we've got to make sure we've got tools and resources for everyone to meet our patients’ needs. 

Host: Dr. McIntosh, what are ways VCU Health promotes patient safety to the community?

Georgia McIntosh, MD: As Dr. Davis mentioned, getting the voice of our patients, the voice of our community. And we do that in multiple different ways. One of the ways that we have been having more intention about, is engaging our patient and family members in terms of hearing what their needs are. So we have a council that helps to guide our staff members and our team members in terms of things that they are seeing that maybe we might not have thought of, or maybe we have thought of a solution in one aspect, but without having that voice of our community, it might not really serve their needs.

And so, really engaging with our community has been a really intentional and deliberate part of this work, that really has been just growing. We've gotten good feedback, and sometimes feedback that's not, again, always comfortable, but really it is helping us to say, what are we really trying to achieve, and do we have the folks that matter the most at the table to help us make those decisions collaboratively? 

So really, that engagement of the community is really our intent and really a deliberate, and focused intention.

Host: Now, is there anything else either of you would like to add about patient safety and quality as we wrap up? Dr. Davis.

Marcelle Davis, DSL: I am honored to work closely with Dr. McIntosh and her team. Anytime I think about the work that our health system does, both in the quality and safety space and in the inclusive excellence space, I am reminded of our commitment to our community. And that is not something that any of us take lightly. And I am proud to work with Dr. McIntosh and her team as we work to ensure that our goal remains advancing health outcomes for all patients. 

Georgia McIntosh, MD: Dr. Davis, I don't think I could have said it any better myself and you've also been a leader and really a great partner in this work. As I think about the different areas that this inclusive excellence touches, it is so multifaceted.

We think about including the perspectives broadly with research. We think about how this inclusivity increases our patients' adherence to medication plans, or treatment plans. We think about how we serve the underserved in communities that might not have as much attention or resources. We really think about how we do all of those pieces and that inclusivity, that broad reach is really the best way that we can do that. So, partnering with you, Dr. Davis, has been a highlight in my journey. And really, I think that this is what we intend to do and what we continue to strive here at VCU. 

Host: Thank you to both of you. Your passion is evident on this topic and your commitment to quality and excellence and inclusion. As we close our podcast, I just want to reiterate VCUHealth’ s mission, and it is to preserve and restore health for all people of Virginia and beyond through innovation in service, research, and education.

Again, thank you to our guests this episode, Dr. Marcelle Davis and Dr. Georgia McIntosh, for putting that mission at the center of what you do. For more information on VCU Health's commitment to Inclusive Excellence, visit VCU health.org/dei. To listen to other podcasts from VCU Health that may be of interest to you, go to VCUhealth.org/podcast.

This is Healthy with VCU Health. Thanks for listening.