Caring Greatly™ Podcast

The podcast for leaders who bring humanity to the work of healthcare

The Caring Greatly™ podcast is a destination where healthcare leaders find stories and resources designed to help them to grow, lead, innovate, and rejuvenate. In an interview format, thought leaders from across healthcare disciplines share insights and inspiration about leading and thriving as the industry transforms. Podcast themes span human-centered leadership, technology and innovation, and points in between.
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The Power of Connected Leadership Jennifer Clark, MD

March 4, 2024
Episode 80
Duration: 35:16
In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Clark shares insights from research she recently published on leadership loneliness in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Excellence. She delves into the ways that leader loneliness creates a self-reinforcing cycle in which isolation leads to self-devaluation, attempts to compensate through more work and less sleep, which then further compromises connection. As a result, says Dr. Clark, they become less effective and resilient as leaders, decreasing the efficacy of their teams and lowering organizational resilience. Like burnout in clinicians, leader loneliness results from structural elements that can be addressed through deliberate connection and positive organizational design.
Jennifer Clark, MD

Supporting nurse wellbeing across the career continuum – Robin Geiger

January 18, 2024
Episode 79
Duration: 28:52
In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Geiger talks about the need to support nurses holistically through an approach that Ingenovis calls ACT, which stands for Advocacy, Career, and Tools. Based on interdisciplinary research, Dr. Geiger and her team built the approach as a means of combatting burnout and building resilience at both the structural and individual levels. By advocating for what nurses and other clinicians need at the policy level, supporting their career advancement, and providing tools and resources that teach individual wellbeing, Dr. Geiger hopes to bolster the nursing field and keep more nurses working in roles that offer professional fulfillment and personal wellbeing.
Robin Geiger, DNP, MSN, APRN, NP-C, FNP-BC, NEA-BC

Downregulating the Nervous System as a Pathway to Wellbeing – Steve Forti

December 4, 2023
Episode 78
Duration: 42:18
In this episode of Caring Greatly, Mr. Forti shares the science of autonomic downregulation as a focal point for individual wellbeing. While he is an advocate for system change, he believes that those in the healing profession also have a moral obligation to care for their personal wellbeing, given the critical nature of the work they do and the proven links between wellbeing and patient care outcomes. At Hospital for Special Surgery, Mr. Forti created a program that teaches the science behind autonomic downregulation as well as simple practices such as sleep, breathwork, alcohol-abstention, gratitude and nutrition that support heart-rate variability (HRV), a key measure of wellbeing. To date, more than 700 clinicians have completed the training.
Steven Forti, RN

Evidence-based Wellbeing Practices – J. Bryan Sexton

November 10, 2023
Episode 77
Duration: 31:02
In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Sexton talks about his team’s focus on providing accessible, evidence-based wellbeing practice to healthcare team members across the country. His five-part training covers gratitude, work-life balance, self-compassion, awe and wonder, and group-level wellbeing. The approach mixes didactic learning on the science behind wellbeing practices as well as time to put the concepts into practice. Dr. Sexton believes that evidence-based, individually-focused wellbeing practices are an essential complement to broader efforts to transform system factors that cause burnout and distress.
J. Bryan Sexton, PhD

Minimizing Cognitive Overload to Support Team Member Safety and Wellbeing – Elizabeth Harry, MD

October 11, 2023
Episode 76
Duration: 32:00
In this episode, Dr. Harry talks about the principles of cognitive load theory and how they apply to the practice of medicine. She discusses individual, team, and system approaches to managing and minimizing cognitive load by removing extraneous load from system processes and technologies. Dr. Harry also talks about the need to bring human factors engineering science and principles into healthcare so that leaders can work with the cognitive capacities of team members, and free up their finite resources for the most human-centered tasks and relationships. Finally, Dr. Harry shares insights into how leaders at every level can contribute to team member and patient safety by prioritizing an understanding of cognitive capacity and designing accordingly.
Liz Harry

The Transparency Conundrum – Danielle Ofri, MD

July 7, 2023
Episode 75
Duration: 34:38
In this episode, Dr. Ofri talks about an article she published in the New Yorker titled, “The Curious Side Effects of Medical Transparency.” She delves into how the act of exposing medical notes to patients necessarily changes their purpose and their content, and how that, in turn, changes the thinking processes of clinicians. She also talks about how art and expression are both integral to and separate from the art and science of medicine. Finally, Dr. Ofri offers advice to rising clinicians about how to separate their responsibilities from their identities to support sustainable practice.
Danielle Ofri

The Mind-Heart Connection – Jonathan Fisher, MD

June 13, 2023
Episode 74
Duration: 34:48
In this episode, Dr. Fisher talks about how he came to medicine and his experience of burnout, depression, and disillusionment in his early career. That experience led him to take a deep dive into ancient wisdom traditions, but with a scientist’s mind. He shares the seven traits of the heart (steadiness, wisdom, openness, wholeness, courage, lightness and warmth) and how bringing these into healthcare practice creates presence, connection, and, ultimately, healing.
Jonathan Fisher

Creating an Ethical Practice Environment – Cynda Rushton

May 22, 2023
Episode 73
Duration: 34:48
In this episode, Dr. Rushton talks about the concept of values discordance, and what happens when a person perceives their personal or professional values to be out of alignment with their organization’s values. She shares how values play out in an organization – through leadership, decision making, and budgeting. She also digs into the link between values and moral injury, and how ethics considerations need to be a central component of leaders’ wellbeing and leadership strategies. Additionally, Dr. Rushton lays out a structure for how leaders can safeguard ethics and values through leadership and safety infrastructure to support expectations and accountability, practice integration, continuous improvement, and competency building.
Cynda Rushton

Leading for Wellbeing and Resilience – Paul DeChant, MD

May 10, 2023
Episode 72
Duration: 35:49
In this episode, Dr. DeChant talks about what’s different about workplace transformation in the trailing edge of the COVID-19 pandemic. He looks at the need to rethink workload as an antidote to burnout, digging deeper than the concept of exhaustion into the causes of cynicism and inefficacy. This means delving into concepts such as respect, values, and community connection. Dr. DeChant talks about management concepts such as LEAN and what it takes to apply these in ways that solve for burnout rather than contributing to it. He also touches on leadership burnout and how leaders can care for their own resilience and wellbeing and then lead others on a path toward joy and wellbeing at work.
Paul DeChant

Eliminate Intrusive Questions in Licensure and Credentialing to Reduce Mental Health Stigma – Corey Feist

December 22, 2022
Episode 71
Duration: 36:43
In this episode, Mr. Feist and I talk about the factors that led to Dr. Breen’s death by suicide in 2020. Chief among these was a fear of losing her medical license if it became known that she had needed mental health support. This legacy is what has led the Foundation to launch a campaign to eliminate intrusive mental health questions from healthcare professional licensure and credentialing processes, a change that will help reduce the stigma that currently exists in healthcare around seeking mental health support. This change is beginning to happen at healthcare institutions and in state licensing boards across the country and represents a simple yet meaningful change to creating safer healthcare workplaces for team members and patients alike.
J. Corey Feist