Episode 67 – Trust as the Foundation for Safety and Well-being – Mike Woodruff, MD

Mike Woodruff, MD, is chief patient experience officer at Intermountain Healthcare. Intermountain’s Office of Patient Experience combines safety, quality, and experience of care under a single governance umbrella, recognizing that they are deeply interconnected. Dr. Woodruff and his team take a holistic approach to caring for patients, families, and healthcare workers. He is an emergency physician who is driven to alleviate suffering. He believes that listening is the most powerful diagnostic tool available to clinicians.

In this episode, Dr. Woodruff and I talk about the central role that trust plays in supporting team member safety and well-being. While trust is not an unusual concept in leadership, Dr. Woodruff takes an expansive view, connecting it to every process that an individual interacts with within a system. He believes that any process that isn’t explicitly designed to build trust – by showing respect and integrity – has the potential to erode trust, and that those small, daily interactions carry more collective weight than a single, positive, in-person encounter. He and his team use two questions to filter the trust factor on organizational processes: Does it support the mission? And, is it kind?

Links related to Dr. Woodruff's podcast:

• Edward Deming's red bead experiment
• Research paper, Human-Centered Leadership Mastery Model

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Vocera, now part of Stryker.