Transcription:

Michael Carrese: You're listening to Inspiring Health with Dr. Roxanna Gapstur, President and CEO of WellSpan Health. As she hosts candid conversations about organizational culture value and other pressing issues we face in healthcare and business today, I'm Michael Carrese and Roxanna, it's really great to be back with you today.

Dr. Gapstur: Michael. It's so good to be back.

Host: Yeah, we've been on this podcast journey since October before the entire world changed on us.

Dr. Gapstur: Yes, no kidding. We released 15 episodes in five months for our WellSpan team members and received a lot of positive feedback.

Host: Oh, that's great. We've covered a lot of ground including WellSpan's new vision and the organization's strategic plan known as WellSpan 2025 also touched on organizational culture, diversity and inclusion, emerging trends in healthcare, clinical innovation, lots and lots of stuff. List goes on.

Dr. Gapstur: Yeah. We've had a pretty extensive list. We've enjoyed connecting with our guests and so many different topics, and we've built a strong following with our WellSpan team members and leaders, which is really great. We're going to continue to have candid conversations about our organizational culture, about our journey to value and other pressing issues that we face in healthcare and business today.

Host: Great. I'm really looking forward to it. And now that Inspiring Health is available anywhere people get their podcasts. You can listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play. So what do you want new listeners to know about the Inspiring Health Podcast?

Dr. Gapstur: I'd like them to know that we're continuing to explore competencies for leaders, both in and outside of healthcare to move organizations forward and reach goals. Like WellSpan, a lot of organizations use their vision as a North star. Inspiring Health Podcast provides a glimpse into how WellSpan's steering our team of 20,000 doctors, nurses, care teams and business leaders toward a singular vision. And our new vision is a trusted partner. Re-Imagining Healthcare, Inspiring Health.

Host: And that's a great segue for the discussion today. And we're going to be talking about resiliency, right?

Dr. Gapstur: We've had more than 4000 people test positive in our area here, Michael, during the pandemic. And our teams have cared for a couple of hundred of those patients in our hospitals, but also many others in our clinics and ambulatory settings. So it's been really quite an experience. And I would say resiliency is one of the first words that comes to mind.

Host: And for this conversation on resiliency, you've invited a special guest.

Dr. Gapstur: Yes, today we have with us Dr. Mike Diller, he's one of our licensed psychologists and director of our employee assistance program.

Host: Welcome aboard Mike.

Dr. Diller: Thank you, Michael and Roxanna. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here today.

Host: So Roxanna, tell us about the past few months. What has it been like at WellSpan during the pandemic?

Dr. Gapstur: Well, luckily for us, Michael, we started our preparations pretty early and it really served us well. We used a system wide approach to command center and we use that to help direct our preparations in our regions. Everyone worked together and we used one of our values actually, which is called working as one, but we've done many, many things in the past few months, we've redeployed team members to areas where they were most needed. We've continued to see a fluctuation of the COVID-19 presence across our communities. So we remain prepared with safety, being one of our number one priorities. Our teams have been incredibly resilient, living our values and using those to fulfill our mission to the community during this time. And I think it's the reason we've seen the best of WellSpan shine through, during a very dark time. From our people, to our teamwork, to serving our community in new and different ways. It really boils down to resiliency, no matter how tough it got our teams remain dedicated to our mission. And I've just been so inspired by them and by our care teams across the globe, responding to such a challenge.

Host: And Mike, with your background in psychology, I imagine you have an interesting vantage point on the subject.

Dr. Diller: I'm with Roxanna on this, for sure. Resiliency is one's psychological capacity to adapt to stressful situations and bounce back from adverse challenges and adversity. But that's what we've seen throughout this organization. This has likely been the single most difficult time in the lives of many of our caregivers in the midst of coping personally, there've been many losses and challenges. They are also responsible for caring for others at work.

Host: Right. Big challenge. So for both of you thinking about our listeners, maybe we can talk about how we become resilient and how you've seen team members doing that during this difficult period, Mike, let's start with the behavioral side of things.

Dr. Diller: What we know is that resiliency is developed over time. It's really a process and we can all build and grow it. The idea of building resiliency has been a major part of my professional walk for the last 25 years. The current research and national conversation about resiliency during the pandemic has been significant. There's so much information out there, but this is what we know. If you practice the key factors in building resilience, it will grow and you will be better able to cope with the stressful times in your life.

Host: So it sounds like the muscle, you got to keep practicing and training and improve over time, what would some of those key factors be?

Dr. Diller: I was recently a part of a webinar through the Jed foundation and I was drawn to an infographic that was done by Dr. Anna Allman of Columbia university, where she provided nine evidence-based tips to weather, harsh seasons. It echoes much of what I've been sharing with WellSpan, employer partners and our own team members over the past few months, I'm not going to go over all nine of them, but there are three key takeaways that I would love the listeners to be able to reflect on and embrace today. First engage in self care. It starts there in order to do the others. You need to attend to the bare basics of rest, hydration, nutritional fuel, and I've thrown in movement. You have to keep moving, physical exercise. Second, connect, this always rises to the top of the resilience research, meaningful human connections, including those who are trustworthy and compassionate, finding others where you can be vulnerable real, and just your genuine self connection is a two way street seeking support and then offering it to others are both equally powerful.

Kelly McGonagall, a health psychologist refers to this as quote, caring, creates resilience, unquote, and shares the physical and emotional benefits of meaningful human connection. Third flexibility. This is where mindset matters. Those who have and embrace a growth mindset are able to show that bounce back ability through the most stressful times. What do I mean by growth mindset and flexibility here, it's being able to accept the current situation, but holding on to the most powerful part that we hold the key to being able to choose how we respond to a situation. To choose our path, our next steps, focusing on what we have control over in the moment, being flexible in our thinking, finding and embracing meaning. And the silver linings through dark times lead us to the light.

Host: Well, that's really helpful advice. So three big factors, self care, staying connected and being flexible. Roxanna, how is WellSpan leading? Do you think with the cultural resiliency?

Dr. Gapstur: Reflecting on what Mike said, embracing meaning our team has had really one singular focus during this pandemic and that is to slow the spread of the virus and serve each one of our patients with the safest, highest quality care, but so important to this is the safety and wellbeing of our own teams. We've watched the burnout nationally before the pandemic and during it. And we knew we'd need to ramp up even greater support systems for our teams. When people are mission driven and have the support they need, they can do truly incredible things. So we knew it was important to offer support. And we tried offering support in those three ways that Michael just indicated. Self care, staying connected and being flexible. We launched a peer to peer support phone line, support groups over zoom and one-on-one texting services. We've also used My Strength, which is an app that has resources for emotional wellbeing. And we've had over 3,600 team members take advantage of these offerings. That's quite a few from our organization. For our communities, we launched a number of public resources to a 24 seven helpline, a webpage with video resources. And we're meeting with organizations one-on-one to provide custom support through experts like Mike. With WellSpan, Phil Haven, our behavioral health organization. We found we are in a unique position to offer a different kind of support.

Host: And what do you think have some of the silver linings of having a resilient team?

Dr. Gapstur: First and foremost, I would say our doctors, nurses, and frontline teams running headfirst into a crisis to treat our patients. Our incident command structure is a great example of accepting the situation and being flexible. It allows us to respond with both centralized decision making and operationalized regional teams. The system-ness of leveraging all our resources and redeploying our team members. We also challenged the assumption of care delivery. We built upon our telemedicine platform scaling from 200 visits per week, up to 20,000 visits per week in just six weeks. And today we're serving more than half of our patients with virtual visits. We've seen so many examples of acting with courage and tenacity. It's been truly humbling to watch our teams and our communities come together to find a better way and do the right thing, which are two of our values here at WellSpan. One day when I was rounding at Effete community hospital, I came out of the hospital. I had just been up to visit those individuals who were caring for some of our COVID-19 patients. And there was a team member carrying some food out of the hospital. And I asked her, I said, where are you headed? And she said, I'm taking this food to a motel where one of our homeless patients is waiting test results for COVID-19, and he didn't have any food. And that just really struck me as just an example of how our teams have gone above and beyond and how their own resilience has allowed them to offer great care to other people.

Host: That's a great example, Mike, you lead a team here at WellSpan. What has that experience been like being a leader through this crisis?

Dr. Diller: When everything went from what was to what in the world is going to happen next? That was less than in less than five days. My entire team was transitioned to work from home through the extraordinary efforts from our IT team and many others as a whole WellSpan went from 300 remote workers to more than 3000 in just one week. We didn't miss a beat and continuing to support our employer partners through Well at Work and our fellow colleagues here at WellSpan, but in an instant, we were all now working separately and remotely. The first thing I did was schedule two check and connect meetings, using zoom simply to stay connected and regular check in with one another. And that has been awesome. It's my favorite meeting. Our why has always been finding ways to offer hope and support to others, but we always start with lifting each other up so that we're in the best place possible to lift and support others. We've all been challenged to be flexible in our thinking and our actions as the COVID-19 crisis has impacted each one of us in a uniquely specific ways to our own life story. We make sure we take time to check in with each other about that story, as well as all the other day to day work needs and responsibilities, that must continue to be addressed and supported. So it all goes back to the big three tips I mentioned earlier, self care, stay connected and being flexible while seeking and embracing meaning where you may have never thought you may have found it.

Host: So Roxanna, every organization obviously has had to respond in this crisis. Have you seen any leadership examples outside of WellSpan that have resonated with you as best practices?

Dr. Gapstur: Yeah, absolutely. Michael, I've seen leadership in our communities across all six of our counties, tremendous leadership from nonprofit community based organizations who are working to provide food and shelter for people who don't have it. I've seen elected officials who have stepped up and helped solve problems in the community. I've seen other health system leaders who've stood up and helped with public service announcements and slowing the spread. So it seems to me that during this crisis we've seen leadership in just about every corner of our organization and our communities. One of the things I would highlight about South central Pennsylvania is that we have a lot of local manufacturing here. Many of our local manufacturers whose production lines were down actually helped us make personal protective equipment for our staff in teams to help them be safe. We also had local distilleries who made us hand sanitizer. So nationally, we know that a lot of collaboration was going on and we saw that right here in our own communities as well.

Host: Yeah, it really has brought out the best in people in so many ways. Mike, you've been helping other organizations manage through this crisis through WellSpan's employer division. Well at work and WellSpan Phil Haven, what lessons have you been sharing with them?

Dr. Diller: We've had the privilege to be a part of a tremendous team of folks here at WellSpan health. And so appreciative of being able to be a part of such a great team and a collective and collaborative effort. We provided a regular timely webinar updates from panels, featuring WellSpan leaders and experts, which started before the end of March, and have continued to ensure we are offering trusted guidance and support to our neighbors. I know it is often stated right now that we're all in this together, but I've been a firm believer that that has always been true. It will be how we all get through this together. I also had the privilege of doing a five-part brief video series on coping and self care tips during a crisis. And that has been shared on internal and external WellSpan websites and social media. I'm excited to say that I've been asked to do the introductory video of the next series on coping through the what's next to the COVID-19 crisis, which will feature trusted experts from WellSpan, Phil Haven on hope, self care, supporting our children and resiliency.

Those will be released soon on wellspan.org and in social media. Earlier, Roxanna mentioned My Strength. This is an evidence based portal and app and in the spirit of supporting one another during this crisis, WellSpan is offering at no cost to you, free access for the next six months through the end of October. It has been used widely at WellSpan Phil Haven for years, and has also been shared throughout our entire organization to support our team members. While designed to support psychological and emotional wellbeing. It has evolved into a truly whole person wellbeing app for more information, and to access this wonderful resource, go to mystrength.com or download the, my strength app and enter code all one word, in caps, W P H 999. Again, mystrength.com or download the, my strength app and enter code W P H in caps 999, one word.

Host: Well, that sounds like a great resource for folks. So we have covered a lot of ground, it's good to look back, but we also want to look forward. So Roxanna, what role does resiliency play as we attempt to create a new normal now?

Dr. Gapstur: Resiliency allows us to shape our own destiny, Michael, and take care of ourselves so that it creates capacity to care for, and about others. Wellspan as an organization is building our own resiliency one employee at a time, and that's what will lead to our success in the future. And one of the things that we've been talking about lately is who inspires us to think about resiliency? And we were talking about Harry Truman the other day, and his saying about a pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities. An optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. And we certainly feel like WellSpan has made opportunities out of our difficulties the last few weeks. So very proud of the whole team and the work we've done around COVID-19 and to improve our own resiliency one employee at a time.

Host: You've been listening to Inspiring Health with Dr. Roxanna Gapstur, president and CEO of WellSpan Health. As she hosts candid conversations about organizational, culture, value, and other pressing issues we face in healthcare and business today. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us again.