Key Takeaways
- Bridge the disconnect between bedside care and administrative goals by serving as a translator who seeks common ground and fosters mutual respect.
In an era when clinician burnout and patient distrust can feel like permanent fixtures of the healthcare landscape, the most effective leaders are the ones returning the system to first principles: humanity, humility, and shared purpose. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t invent the cracks between bedside and boardroom—it widened them. Today, rebuilding trust demands more than new dashboards or staffing models; it calls for leaders who can translate across cultures, listen deeply, and act with courage.
That’s the work of Gwendolyn Williams MD, FHM—a hospitalist and associate professor of medicine at VCU Health and a long-time physician leader who served as President of the Medical Executive Committee (a role akin to Chief of Staff) at Sentara CarePlex Hospital in Hampton Roads. Across roles in governance, wellness, and chapter leadership with the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), Williams has built bridges between clinicians and executives while keeping the patient—and the person providing the care—squarely at the center.
Her core thesis is deceptively simple: “Healthcare is a business, medicine is an art, and the two do not necessarily marry well — but they must respect each other.” Respect, she argues, is the shortest path to common ground, the precondition for trust, and the first step in shifting cultures that can drift into toxicity under stress.
What follows is a synthesis of Williams’s journey and playbook—equal parts narrative and analysis—on how to lead with presence, rebuild trust after collective trauma, and transform cultures through listening, compassion, and shared accountability.
Williams doesn’t pinpoint a single moment when she “became” a leader. “It happened very early,” she says—well before medical school—through advocacy, community work, and a long string of student leadership roles. That early experience became a throughline in her clinical career as a hospitalist: the discipline of caring for acutely ill, hospitalized patients while navigating the complexity, pace, and uncertainty of inpatient medicine.
As she moved into formal leadership, Williams served as Vice President of the medical staff and later as President of the Medical Executive Committee at Sentara CarePlex Hospital, the physician governance body where bylaws are stewarded, quality is debated, and peer review and professionalism are addressed in direct collaboration with the C‑suite. In parallel, she led the SHM Hampton Roads chapter—“a role that brings me absolute joy”—and under her leadership the chapter earned national recognition.
In January 2020, Williams co‑founded and then chaired a wellness and engagement team. Within weeks, COVID-19 transformed that agenda from a “nice-to-have” to a survival strategy. The focus expanded from patient safety to psychological safety—“really looking at our, not just our patients, but the people who provide care equally and everyone’s wellbeing being collectively important.” The group pivoted quickly, helping clinicians surf the emotional whiplash of the unknown while partnering with administrative leaders to translate risk, resources, and reality in real time.
The lesson: wellness cannot be episodic or ornamental. It must be built into the operating fabric, with governance attention and clinician voice. And it requires leaders comfortable advocating in both directions—explaining the operational constraints that administrators face and, just as importantly, making the human case for frontline needs.
Williams refuses to romanticize the divide. “The gap is subjective,” she notes. “It’s relative to the group you’re a part of and who’s around you.” What widens the space, she argues, is less malice than misunderstanding: executives don’t always grasp how decisions land at the bedside; clinicians don’t always appreciate the constraints of capital, regulation, or system tradeoffs. The work is to translate.
Translation starts with posture. “The goal is not to win,” Williams says. “The goal is to find common ground.” In practice, that means entering discussions not as combatants but as collaborators serving a single team: patients and community. That shift of frame—from sides to shared purpose—invites curiosity and opens room for solutions.
If translation is the work, listening is the muscle that powers it. Williams is candid about how hard it is: “In healthcare, we think we’re the best listeners. We are the worst listeners.” Her humbling moment came not in a boardroom but at home. Lost in mental to‑dos, she missed her three‑year‑old’s words until her daughter grabbed her face: “Mommy, you are not listening to me. I need you to hear me.” That, Williams says, is the daily corrective leaders need: hold space before making a point; reflect before reacting; hear the person, not just the problem.
This is not soft-skills garnish; it’s operational strategy. Leaders who listen surface constraints earlier, defuse conflict sooner, and design systems people can actually use. Listening is also the wellspring of dignity at work—the experience of being seen and taken seriously—which becomes fuel for effort in high‑stress environments.
Williams’s theory of power is as much ethical as it is practical. “Power is something to be respected,” she says. “If you do not have the humility to bend down and pick up power that someone has laid at your feet, you should not have it.” Exercised well, power invites participation; misused, it breeds fear and disengagement. Her meetings model belonging: kids’ voices in the background are okay; contributions are welcomed in their own time; the culture prizes candor without bullying. When leaders normalize humanity, people take risks on behalf of patients.
Williams is blunt about cultural drift in parts of healthcare: “The culture of healthcare is extremely abusive. It’s extremely toxic because people don’t take the time to think about what they’re going to say and how they’re going to say it.” Her remedy is not performative niceness but principled kindness. “Kindness is not weakness. It’s a great strength.” Coupled with accountability, it changes trajectories: apologize and mean it, then improve the behavior. “Don’t be sorry. Be better.”
Trust “takes seconds to break and a lifetime to repair.” Williams argues that healthcare must rebuild on two fronts at once. The first is trust with patients and communities—especially those long underserved. The second is trust with the workforce itself, frayed by the pandemic and its aftermath.
On the community side, trust grows when the system engages with people as whole humans. “Focus on our patients and our communities beyond their medical illnesses,” Williams urges, naming food insecurity, housing, education, and health literacy as practical starting points for cross‑sector collaboration.
On the workforce side, acknowledging trauma is non‑negotiable. “We need trauma‑informed leaders,” she says, those who know that a “keep calm and carry on” message after mass loss and prolonged moral distress is not only unrealistic—it’s harmful. In Williams’s practice, that looks like debriefs after code events, moments of silence, and explicit permission for clinicians to experience and process big emotions. Safety lives not just in personal protective equipment but in psychological safety: the shared belief a team can speak up, ask for help, and be human.
Culture and policy must move together. Williams points to the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation as a model for changing the structural incentives that punish vulnerability, particularly invasive mental‑health questions on credentialing forms. Removing those barriers, she argues, is a concrete step toward treating clinician mental health as a safety issue, not a stigma.
And, she cautions, symbolic efforts won’t cut it: “As much as I like pizza—I’m a New Yorker—a pizza party is not going to fix this.” Real rebuilding requires investment, measurement, and hard choices about what gets deprioritized so that people can recover.
Williams’s wellness and engagement team, launched in early 2020, is a case study in making wellbeing actionable. The team’s anchor ideas—psychological safety, bidirectional communication, and parity between patient and caregiver wellbeing—helped leaders justify time for debriefs, normalize asking for help, and keep executives close to the frontline signal in the most chaotic moments of the pandemic. The pivot was not about perks; it was about codifying humane practice under pressure.
As President of SHM’s Hampton Roads chapter, Williams emphasizes culture-setting as core work: celebrating contributions, modeling inclusive meetings, and protecting autonomy so leaders can grow without micromanagement. The results—recognition at the national conference and a pipeline of energized leaders—flow from design choices that prioritize belonging. In Williams’s telling, joy is not a by‑product of a healthy chapter; it’s a leading indicator of future impact.
On any given day, the bridge work is granular: making the case for affordable medications, explaining why timely home health visits post‑discharge matter for frail elders, or advocating for collaboration across specialties and even across systems so that a patient’s care plan is coherent. Williams names these not as abstractions but as the daily content of translation: clinician stories that help administrators see the “why,” and administrator context that helps clinicians understand the “how.”
Williams tells a domestic story with professional implications. After an exhausted morning, she lashed out over unwashed bottles and later apologized. Her husband asked a single question: “Why did you choose chaos over peace?” The question landed. In hospital dynamics—an undrawn lab, a delayed study, a scarce resource—the reflex to escalate is powerful. Choosing peace is not avoidance; it’s a strategy to “funnel passion,” to invite people into a calmer space where problem‑solving becomes possible. It takes time, she admits, and “time is the thing we always feel we don’t have,” but embracing that time is how change sticks.
Williams’s metaphor for the future is a round table with no head: clinicians, executives, patients, and community partners approaching problems with equal dignity and voice. “If I’m in the room where it’s going to happen, I need to not only have a voice, but champion other voices that are in the room—and the voices that can’t be in the room.” That’s what it means to keep “the human in healthcare.”
The practical implications are many: bring community organizations into care planning; align on shared outcomes beyond volume and RVUs; publish staffing and safety metrics alongside patient‑experience data; build feedback loops that reach the people who can act. Respect the art and the business—and make them respect each other.
Compassion, for Williams, is not the impulse to fix everything immediately. It’s “the desire to be there, understand, be mindfully present, and then ask: How can I help?” That stance helps leaders avoid two traps: dismissiveness (which erodes trust) and over‑promising (which breeds cynicism). Compassionate leadership aligns expectations with resources while making it unmistakable that people’s experiences matter.
Perfection, especially in complex systems, is a mirage. Williams reframes success as excellence pursued together: agreeing on goals, iterating in the open, and measuring progress with humility. When teams internalize that frame, they are more likely to surface problems early, learn quickly, and persist through the messy middle of change.
Williams’s leadership philosophy is not theoretical—it is hard‑won at the intersection of human vulnerability and system constraint. The prescription is clear: honor the art and the business; design for listening and psychological safety; lead with compassion and accountability; build a table where every voice matters. Do these things, and the distance between bedside and boardroom begins to shrink.
“Take away titles, take away white coats,” Williams says. “We’re all human beings and we have a shared humanity.” In a system that has survived crisis after crisis, that reminder is not sentimentality. It’s strategy—one that just might rebuild trust where it matters most: between people who heal and the people they serve.
<p>Because change is the one thing humans always resist, you know. So you have time that's not that not enough of us. We wish we had more of and then we have change that needs to happen in order to transform people and systems and communities. But you need to be able to embrace both. [Music] Hello, this is Zach with the American Journal of Healthcare Strategy and you are listening to the Clinicians and Leadership podcast where we focus on empowering clinicians from bedside to boardroom.</p> <p>Today we are joined um by Dr. Gwindelyn Williams. Dr. Dr. Williams, thank you for joining us today on the Clinicians and Leadership podcast. We're excited to have you on today um and and excited to dive into these topics and of of and questions that we we've discussed. Um, and so, but before we get into that, do you mind telling us just a little bit about yourself, about about your experience, um, and and the ways that you have served within the medical field? Sure.</p> <p>Thank you, Zach, for having me on the clinicians leadership podcast. I'm so excited and so honored actually that, um, you you asked me to be a part of this. I think this is a great movement uh, that you all have started and it's going to have um, quite meaningful impact. Um, my name is Dr. Gwendelyn Williams. I am a hospitalist um at Virginia Common University Health in Richmond, Virginia. I'm also a uh associate professor of medicine for the department of internal medicine.</p> <p>Um prior to starting this um new role that I have um I have been a medical attending for over a decade. So I have over a decade of of clinical experiences and attending and when you add on medical school and residency you that's another seven eight years of experience. Um, but when it comes to leadership specifically, I can't really point down when it happened, but I think it happened a lot earlier than when I started medical school. Um, it really did.</p> <p>Um, you know, being involved in things in whether it's in the community, you know, advocating for social justice. Um, you know, being president, vice president of things and my my classes in school. I think it it it was something that happened very very early on in my life. And um I I was a medical attendee in hospital medicine for the past decade. Um I became a chief of medicine. I became vice president of medical staff.</p> <p>And then um at Centa Kiplex Hospital, I became the first woman ever to be president of the medical executive committee. And that's the committee where um you uh essentially all the bylaws for physicians and providers are there. That's where we talk about quality. Um we talk uh about um improving care for our patients.</p> <p>um in m multiple levels peer review and you know the occasional uh we have to talk to somebody about their behavior kind of thing but it's where we also collaborate with our seauite and our leadership um where they are a part of these conversations as well. So it's very interesting that you know we're going to be talking about how do we um bridge the gap you know that that we feel is there between clinicians um and our counterparts which is our administrative teams and our leadership teams.</p> <p>Um in addition to doing that um I'm also the president of the society of possible medicine Hampton Roads chapter. Um it is a leadership position that brings me absolute joy. I love what I do with the chapter and the society on a national level. Um and and I I can tell you right now it's because I have a lot of autonomy. I have a lot of um room to cultivate growth.</p> <p>Um and as a leader that's so important to be able to do that, but you also be able to do it in a way in which you know not be micromanaged. So it's really great. Our chapter is actually receiving three awards at the national conference in April for the work that we've done in the past year.</p> <p>Um so I'm really really excited about that and um I also in my prior role in Cinta in the Centa Medical Group I also was um a member of the board of directors as well as the uh co-chair and then chair of the wellness and engagement team which I actually started in 2020 January 2020 I became chair co-chair of that team and we did phenomenal work in that first two years of co we pivoted and we diduch great things and again I I do believe because people were so concerned about co and you know having these you know meetings about safety and these meetings about you know how are we going to handle something we we don't even know what it is you know um my team and I were able to um say hey we want to do this and we did not you when it comes to the well-being and psychological safety um and really looking at our not just our patients but the people who provide care equally and everyone's well-being uh being collectively important.</p> <p>Well, like I said, Dr. Williams, we're we're grateful to to have you on today, the Clinicians and Leadership Podcast, and just I mean, hearing you talk about your experience and and your background.</p> <p>It's it's hard not to get excited just to just to dive into these topics just because you have I mean, you have extensive experience both both serving as an attending for, you know, over 10 years, that clinical providing that patient centered care, that excellent patient centered care, and then and serving in a variety of leadership roles.</p> <p>you you mentioned some of that starting prior to attending medical school and and and a lot of leadership roles after that and so you have extensive leadership and clinical experience which is fantastic but I I think one of the things that is most interesting and exciting about you is just your genuiness and your your passion and your your it's just it's contagious and so I'm I'm really really grateful to have you on today and and really excited to dive into some of these topics.</p> <p>Um I'm happy to be here. I really am. Before we get into the talking more about bridging that gap in and in and uh keeping the human in the heart of healthcare, um I wanted to hear a little bit more with your extensive clinical and patient care experience. How has that impacted your approach in the leadership and administrative roles that you have had? Everyone brings something. Everyone's going to bring something when you have a group of people together.</p> <p>Whether it's you're in a boardroom in healthcare or you're sitting around in Starbucks, you know, and you're you're meeting to talk about Dragon Ball Z, it it it doesn't it doesn't matter. Somebody's always going to bring something. So, as a clinician, as a physician, um when I started in say the leadership uh the the formal leadership roles, um I realized that there was a lack of understanding of what I did.</p> <p>there was a lack of understanding um also on the opposite end of what our seuite did and administratively and on the business side. Um, so I think as a clinician, uh, having that close relationship with our patients and as a hospitalist, I work inside the hospital. So I take care of the sickest patients in our community who are acutely ill and who um you can't you can't not have a close relationship with them because they are trusting you. They are inviting you into their life, into their story.</p> <p>And so as a physician, when you have that, there's a passion that comes to getting what your patient needs. Um, helping to overcome any hurdles or any obstacles that may be in the way and challenges and navigating those challenges. And when you're a frontline worker, you know, it's just like being on the front lines of, you know, a war.</p> <p>Like the soldiers on the front line are going to have a very, very different experiences than somebody who may not even be in the same country with them calling some shots. You know what I'm saying? So, it's it's bringing that but bringing bringing that experience to the table with the understanding that somebody may not initially grasp onto it. And that's okay. That somebody may not initially understand why it's important. And that's okay because that's why I'm there.</p> <p>I'm there to help them understand why is it important for our patients to, you know, get medications they need at an affordable rate. Why is it important for um home visits for our elderly patients? be discharged. Why is it important for us to have good collaboration with other specialties and either other systems? Um because it's going to at the end of the day allow us to provide highquality care. Um, and I think be and I am very I'm a big advocate for anyone myself, my patients, my colleagues.</p> <p>And it's understanding that if I'm in the room where it's going to happen, I need to not only have a voice, but champion the voices other voices that are in the room and other voices that can't be in the room.</p> <p>I I think that that is phenomenal and and and just what a what an opportunity that that you and and other clinicians and physicians have to to champion those things and champion their patients and champion those priorities and and just the the benefits that that brings to uh a health care system that champions those things.</p> <p>um right and benefits ultimately the the patients experience for a health care system and for their physicians and other clinicians and medical staff to to champion those things. And so um I'm just really really man that's awesome. That's awesome. So uh Dr.</p> <p>Williams, one of the quotes that most stood out to me and from an earlier conversation we had in um you you may not be the one that originated this quote, but that's what I have in my head and so that's what I'm gonna and so when I think about this quote I'm like man Dr. Williams brilliant and awesome and so we're going to tie this to you.</p> <p>And so um but but the the quote was you you describe you said healthcare is a business medicine is an art and the two do not necessarily marry well but they must respect each other. We we talked earlier in our conversation about there is a gap. There is a gap between executives and administration and and the the frontline clinical patient centered patient care staff and that gap is there. Um but in that quote you you talk about that there must be respect.</p> <p>Um and and so in a sense how do we bridge this gap? How do we promote a culture within the medical field that encourages respect of those two different components of healthcare? Um, and I'm curious to how have you done this throughout your career? The gap is subjective. It's relative. It's relative to the group that you're a part of, to the people you have around you. Um, but it does exist. Uh, how wide it is is going to depend on on numerous amount of factors. So, medicine is a business.</p> <p>I'm sorry. Healthcare is a business. Medicine is an art. Okay? Neither is a bad thing, you know. So, so we got to get rid of that dichconomy that that that dichotomy of, you know, business bad, you know, practicing medicine good or practicing medicine you, you know, or vice versa. We we have to if we're going to enter into a conversation with someone, it's always always in human interaction, the goal is not to win. The goal is to find common ground.</p> <p>But if you look across a lot of disciplines, that's not how it's done. People want to enter into an interaction to win. If you enter into an altercation to fight, you have lost. You You will lose every single time, you know. And and and I and I see that I see that in martial arts. My husband is is, you know, fifth degree black belt in karate. He teaches karate, you know. He has a great understanding of martial arts, but also engagement of human beings.</p> <p>And he says like the moment you enter a fight and you're going to fight, you've lost a fight, you know, outside of competition, you know, in the real world. So when we when we uh look at this this um uh gap, I like to see it as how can we build the bridge between uh peoples, right? Um but I'm going to take it a little bit more more philosophical than that. Why does it have to be sides? There doesn't have to be sides.</p> <p>If if we all realize we're on the same team and the side, the team that we're playing for are our patients and our communities, then there really isn't a big divide between us. What exists in the space is what we don't understand about what each other is bringing to the table and why. And and how how I' how I've how I've navigated that in in healthcare and as a leader. I have been frustrated by my my administrators and I have been frustrated by my colleagues. Okay?</p> <p>I have been in the middle frustrated by both sides. Um and I think the biggest thing that that that I've done as a leader is offer complete authenticity and transparency. You know, that is so important. Um and it lacks on both sides. The other thing I've done is learned how to uh listen more and talk less. And I like to talk. I love to talk. But in a role in which I'm sitting as the MEC president, a lot of times I've I've sat back and I've allowed somebody to have their space.</p> <p>Allow hold space for somebody else. Um, we're often too time to too too many times we're stuck in our mind about what we want to say and the point we want to get across that we don't we don't offer space. We we don't offer ourselves the space to listen. Um, in healthcare, doctors, nurse practitioners, PAs, nurses, healthcare administrative CEOs, they think they're the best listeners. They we we're in a caring profession. We listen the absolute best. No, we are the worst listeners.</p> <p>We are the worst listeners. And I'm going to tell you how how I was so humbled by that. My daughter is three years old and she was saying something to me. I was not paying attention to her. I was thinking about whatever it is we had to do and and she was talking and she kept saying something and I was ignoring her and she grabbed my face and she said, "Mommy, you're not listening to me. You're not listening to me. I need you to hear me." Three years old.</p> <p>And I stood back and I was like, I don't listening to you. If if I'm if I'm doing that with my kid, you know, and we all do it. It's not a bad thing. I'm not not painting it as as a fault, but it's an opportunity for growth. And often times when we're engaging in health care at the leadership level with clinicians and with our executives, the goal should be how can we grow together, right? How can we have a collaborative mindset about the task that we want to um achieve?</p> <p>You know, we want to be successful. No one wants to not be successful. You have to define what that success is going to mean. It's going to mean different things to different people. But it doesn't mean we can't find commonality in what it is that we're trying to achieve, you know, and that's how I've done that. Um as president of Society of Hospital Medicine, Captain Ro chapter, it's much easier for me because I'm the president.</p> <p>Um, I, you know, I have I have my executive board and I have my board advisory committee and I definitely set up a culture. Um, and it was it was actually a I took over from somebody who was president for like over 105 years. So, you know, I'm filling these big shoes of Dr. Tom Miller, but I watched the way he ran meetings. I watched how how he spoke to people. I watched how he listened to people. And that was extremely impactful to me because there was no bullying.</p> <p>There was no force and pressure. Um people often forget that um power is something to be respected. If you do not have the humility to bend down and pick up power that somebody has laid at your feet, you should not have it. It is not a tool to dominate. It is not a tool to bully. Um and quite frankly, I don't see any any positions that I hold as having power.</p> <p>My job as a leader is to allow everyone to have have some kind of input and say and what someone says in one moment may be exactly what we need but hey what somebody else has to offer may be what we need later. It all has value and when you see your colleagues and the people around you as human beings worthy of being listened to it changes how you approach them. So as as the SHM president, my culture during my meetings, my my culture of our chapter is one of belonging.</p> <p>My culture is if I hear your kid on a virtual meeting, that's fine because you've heard my baby screen quite a few times last three years and being three years old, you know, it's everyone is is really celebrated at various times and it's not done in a in in a unauthentic way. It's not, you know, ingenuous. It is very much we're we're championing each other, championing each other, you know. Um, and there's a beauty in that.</p> <p>The other thing I would say is that, you know, when you talk about bridging a gap, whether it's between, you know, clinicians and leaders or us and our patients in the community or any groups, you have to think about what is trust, what is the distrust that's there. And you also have to lead with compassion, right? You know, and leading with compassion often means that what you think is important may not be what's actually important to that group.</p> <p>And having the humility to step back and say, "How can I listen with compassion? How can I care for somebody with compassion?" You know, and compassion is not the desire to fix it. The compassion is the desire to be there, understand, be mindfully present, and then ask how how how can I be of help? How can I help you? That's really important. Well, Dr.</p> <p>Williams, there's a lot of really fascinating things I think that you said throughout that answer and I'm I I I think some of the ones that that really stood out to me is one that gap exists because there's a lack of understanding and and that is a subjective gap. And I I think that that is critical because if we just if we say there's a gap and we don't seek to address the gap at all or don't even recognize how big of a gap that is, we're contributing to the gap that just is adding to the gap.</p> <p>And going off to that a little bit more, I just the the value that comes from it and it and I I recognize that it it sounds simple. It can be a little bit harder, but just listening and and the value that you can that you um communicate to the person that is speaking when you are listening and listening effectively to them.</p> <p>just the the empowerment and the that that brings to that person that that goes so long um and such a long way in and when you are building that culture of belonging and and empowering your team and empowering patients and so that I I think that that's such a such a critical component that that we often overlook um and it's cliche but something you hear a lot is people people won't remember what you said but they'll remember how you make them feel and yes Wild Maya Angelo. Yes. Yes.</p> <p>And it's wild how the impact of not saying anything but listening attentively and showing that you're listening attentively can have the impact on someone. Um and as a result the I I found the people that are the best listeners, those are the people that I also want to hear the most from, you know, the the ones that I want to to hear and and what they have to share. And so um I think that that's fascinating and and wow. Yeah.</p> <p>I I I love what you said just now about about, you know, people won't remember what you did or what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. Maya Angelo was was a um just a goddess. Uh and and off of this realm of when she wrote things and she said things because it it really transcends, you know, decades and and generations and cultures and and countries, excuse me. Um, you know, it really does. Something that we take for granted is it's not what you say, it's how you say it.</p> <p>It's so important. Um, your your body language, you know, tone, um, it's it's extremely important. And you know I I I I hate to say this but you know I I see in various forums let's say forums um you know people talk about kindness and kindness is extremely important. I teach my child kindness. I teach my child kindness because I want her to grow up to be a kind, compassionate, strong um uh confident individual who is a contributing member of society.</p> <p>And I see leaders in healthcare and beyond say, I don't I don't care if somebody thought I was kind, you know, but you could change somebody's life in a moment if you show them kindness. Kindness is not weakness. It's a great strength. Vulnerability is so important in what we do. I'm not saying you have to sit down and have a crying session with somebody, but you can talk to somebody. And even if you have to give them constructive feedback, that's critical. You don't have to be mean about it.</p> <p>And often two times, I hate to say, the culture of healthcare is extremely abusive. It's extremely toxic because people don't take the time to think about what they're going to say and how they're going to say it. And that has ramifications on another human being. And you don't even know how long you know that happens. And that's where accountability comes in because that is something that people in general have a difficult time um being accountable.</p> <p>You know, they have a difficult time being accountable for how they themselves and their actions negatively affected another human being. Um, but it's very very simple, you know. Uh, you can say sorry, but mean it. Mean it. Okay. And if you catch yourself saying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." as a leader, stop saying, "I'm sorry." Don't be sorry. Be better. Be better. Okay?</p> <p>So I I know that's very to the point, but it needs to be said because it's it's very frustrating for everyone involved when when that becomes the acceptable part of the culture. Um because it's very disrespectful um and you take people for granted and you take them for fools. And human beings are extremely intelligent. You don't need a degree. You don't need a degree to prove it.</p> <p>Um, and if you talk to your employees in this way, then how are we interfacing with our patient populations and how are you making them feel? You mentioned just trust within the health care system. That that's a that's a topic that um is has received some attention on more so the the lack of trust that that individuals can have within healthare systems. Um uh and and so as a result recognizing that there there is and can be a lack of trust, how do we rebuild trust?</p> <p>How and how can your your leaders be influential in that way? Yeah. So I I actually did a national talk on this um in 2023 on rebuilding trust in healthcare and I was also invited to SSM Health in Oklahoma City um by Dr.</p> <p>Vas um and um his team out there um to give the same talk because trust is something that it it takes seconds to break in a lifetime to repair, you know, and you don't have to be the one that broke the trust between, you know, this person and the other person or this group and that group, but we bear the responsibility of rebuilding building it and that comes in many ways. It's it's a very very big question.</p> <p>We're not going to solve it um here, but it's a huge topic that we need to look at throughout healthcare. And we're talking about healthcare and being clinicians. Um we do it on onetoone interactions, right? between, you know, the the patient, the the the patient with the physician um or or the provider, the nurse, the therapist, the home health agency, the nursing homes, you know, it's it's um there's so many variables in there and how do we rebuild trust?</p> <p>It's we have to have a a common goal together as a health care unit, as a system. And you don't have to be the same um organization to do it. You have to just recognize that we all play a role in rebuilding that trust and and it goes with, you know, listening, transparency, but trust goes beyond that. And this is what I talk about in my talk. It's not just rebuilding trust with our patients and our communities. It's rebuilding trust with our healthcare workers, right?</p> <p>You know, the COVID pandemic exacerbated so much that already existed in healthcare um that that that the healthcare workforce was dealing with. And we're talking about burnout. We're talking about moral injury. We're talking about workplace violence. Um we're talking about um just um a lost sense of purpose of your why, of why you do what you do, a loss of respect. Um and as much as I like pizza, I'm a New Yorker, a pizza party is not going to fix this. Okay?</p> <p>Um especially if it's not New York pizza, it's not going to fix it, you know? So, so you know when we talk about rebuilding trust in general, we have to talk about morale, the morals of your communities, the morals of your employees. It's the same. It's not different. You know, if I break trust with my kid, right, I have to not only apologize, but I have to show a pattern of behavior in which she can trust me again, right?</p> <p>And and and I take it back to that because that's the phase of life that I'm in right now. I'm the mom of a toddler, you know, which I'm just going to say parents of toddlers negotiate with terrorists every day. We should be running the world. I'm just saying. And my child is so loving and so kind. But but when she gets irrational, I have to call on my own emotional and relational intelligence.</p> <p>And that's also how you you build trust is understanding that we were not taught that um in medical school. People weren't taught that in nursing school. You're not taught that when you're getting your MBA. But it's such a vital component as part of the recipe of rebuilding trust is understanding emotional intelligence and relational intelligence. And the goal is peace, right? The goal is always going to be peace.</p> <p>But you have to recognize when there's chaos, you know, and how do you choose peace over chaos? You know, my my my my husband put that question to me once, you know, I was doing something and I was losing my mind because I was a new mom and going back to work 10 weeks later and, you know, um not having that space. But I remember I got mad because the bottles were not washed, you know. And that's a simple example, but I'm going to translate it into healthcare. The bottles weren't washed.</p> <p>And I just lo I just lost it. Just went off on him. And I left and I went to work. And you know, seven minutes later in my walk to work because I used to walk to work when I lived near my prior job. I texted him. I'm so sorry. I I don't know what came over me, you know. And he didn't respond to me all day at all. And I was like, oh man. Oh man. And so I get home and I said, I'm so sorry, honey.</p> <p>You know, I just wanted to I just wanted to jump into it because in that moment I was making it about how I felt. Yeah, I wasn't considering that he had this experience. I wanted to fix it immediately. I remember we sat down and I was like, "Oh no, oh no." You know, like what's about to happen? And he said, "Honey, I just want to ask you one question. One question." In that moment, why did you choose chaos over peace? Your own peace. Not even my peace.</p> <p>And I've taken that into what I do in healthcare because you can see someone getting upset, you know, why wasn't this lab drawn, right? I need these labs, you know, why wasn't this study study done? I need it for the patient. But that's not an excuse to um rage at somebody or you know, you're having physicians to administrators, you know, why don't we have this this access to this resource that we need to take care of our patients? I'm drowning, you know, I'm trying to do the best that I can.</p> <p>Um, and when the response is not one that is validating, um, or the response is rather dismissive or demeaning, that's going to further bake break trust. If we could respond to people and understand that, you know, somebody's passionate and they're coming this way, not because they want to be disrespectful to me, but because they they care so much. How can I now funnel that?</p> <p>bring them bring bring them into my space, you know, help us settle the storm so we can have a productive intellectual meaningful conversation and interaction. But it takes time to do that and time is the thing that we always feel we have not enough of, right? But you need to embrace embrace that time in order to have effective change because change is the one thing humans always resist, you know? So you have time that's not that not enough as communities, but you need to be able to embrace both.</p> <p>Well, Dr. Williams as as we're seeking to to rebuild this trust and and you just walked us through um several several phenomenal ways on on ways that we can do that and I just love the emphasis and the importance that that that happens not just with health care systems and their patients but also health care systems with their staff and and that's critical but and in doing so how do we rebuild trust with keeping the human and the patient at the center? How how do we maintain that perspective?</p> <p>So, it's the answer I'm going to give is going to be very simple and then and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit, but you we have to remember that we're all human beings. Take away titles, take away white coats, take away all of that. You put us all together. We're all human beings and we have a shared humanity and we each have a human experience.</p> <p>And one way that I've I've seen um our our our clinicians and our healthcare leaders um collaborate the best is when we have a focus on our patients and our communities beyond their medical illnesses, beyond the pneumonia and the heart failures.</p> <p>um beyond the, you know, the diabetes, but but engaging with our patients in their communities, looking at things that affect our our patients and communities such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, education, health literacy, all of these things are very important and they bring everyone together, you know, not just, you know, one group and another group. you have the whole healthcare workforce working for for for for that.</p> <p>On the other end, I would say that when we look at our healthcare workforce, we have to look at their well-being as important as the well-being of our um of our patients. Um and there's a foundation, the Dr. Laura Breen Foundation and the L I'm sorry, the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Heroes Foundation um which has um really advocated at the legislative level to one number one thing remove invasive mental health questions from credentiing applications for physicians and providers.</p> <p>Now they're expanding to talk about burnout and the moral injury. Um and we need traumainformed leaders. We need leaders to understand that we experienced a huge trauma during the COVID pandemic and we can't just keep calm and carry on because you know now we have a better hold on things. we need to talk about what happened.</p> <p>Just like if if if I'm in a code blue and um I've resuscitated somebody and you know we've been going at it for 20 30 minutes and it just comes to the point where we have to call it you know someone has died and I debrief my team right afterwards we I have a moment of silence. I allow them to experience those big emotions and feelings that they have the right to experience as human beings.</p> <p>And I think when we hold space and allow our our colleagues and our leaders to be human, we can engage in that human experience together and say there's nothing wrong with that. It's okay to to feel this way. It is okay to and I hate to say validating, but it is validating that the job we do is extremely stressful. It's extremely hard and there's so many variables and the goal is not perfection. The goal is excellence and and the success is not the the end point.</p> <p>The success is what we do and how we grow together to get to that that that that that goal that we have set. And I think when you talk about leadership and you talk about healthcare, it's always evolving. You know, clinicians are evolving. We're always evolving. We're all and that's a beautiful thing because evolution is how we're going to survive.</p> <p>You know when you whether you look at it you know from a large aspect you standpoint and perspective of evolution or you look at it how are we evolving as a team you know of three people or a healthcare system of you know 20,000 and keeping the the human at the center means keeping the human of the patient and what's important to them to the employee the clinician and healthcare workforce who is really um overwhelmed med right now and providing them with resources that they need so they can have increase in the morale and their happiness and the joy that medicine brings.</p> <p>And then to our leaders as well, you know, our leaders are human beings too. And I believe um our leaders want to do the right thing and just coming together you know um at at at this round table you know there's no head of table at this round table where we all have an equal input and an equal buyin and we all can listen to each other with that respectful tone and and be able to not only hear each other but to really see the other person that is how we keep the human in healthcare. Well, Dr.</p> <p>Williams, we're grateful that you joined us today on this episode of the Clinicians and Leadership podcast and just grateful for your leadership, your your commitment to to advocating for for patients and and and the ways that we can keep the patient at the center of health care, keep the human at the center of healthcare, and shorten and and uh eliminate that gap that sometimes we see between your executives and your clinical staff.</p> <p>And so thank you for for the ways that you do that and thank you for your authenticity um and just the your genuiness and it's it's contagious to see. So thank you for today and for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Zach for having me. This was lovely. Anytime. And you all keep doing the good work. Thank you so much.</p>
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