Episode 63 – The Evidence for Team Member Safety and Well-Being – Kedar Mate, MD

Kedar Mate, MD, is President and Chief Executive Officer at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), President of the IHI Lucian Leape Institute, and a member of the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College. His scholarly work has focused on health system design, health care quality, strategies for achieving large-scale change, and approaches to improving value. Previously Dr. Mate worked at Partners In Health, the World Health Organization, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and has served as IHI’s Chief Innovation and Education Officer.

In this episode, Dr. Mate and I talk about research IHI recently completed into a broadened definition of team member safety and well-being put forth by the CEO Coalition, a group of US-based healthcare CEOs who see team member safety and well-being as an essential component of healthcare efficacy and sustainability. The CEO Coalition’s Heart of Safety Declaration of Principles expands the definition of safety to include protecting psychological and emotional well-being, promoting health justice by declaring equity and anti-racism core components of safety, and ensuring physical safety, which includes a zero-harm program to eliminate workplace violence, both physical and verbal. Dr. Mate shares what he and his team learned through the research process and how improvement science is critical to advancing safety and well-being. He also shares a long-term vision for healthcare in which the traditional locations and relationships of care expand, requiring a renewed focus on adaptive leadership competencies.

Links related to Dr. Mate's podcast:

• IHI blog post, Centering a More Holistic View of Workforce Safety
• CEO Coalition Heart of Safety: Declaration of Principles