We all want to build a healthier Nebraska over the next 10, 20, 30 years.
But what does that mean? And how are we going to pay for it?
These were among the questions broached by keynote speaker Atul Grover, MD, PhD, executive director of the AAMC Research and Action Institute, at the latest edition of UNMC’s Breakthrough Thinking Conference series.
More than 50 campus leaders took part in Wednesday’s conference, which also featured Kara Penfield, executive coach and leadership consultant with Sprio Coaching Institute, and Andre Vite, assistant vice chancellor at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, noted that the Breakthrough Thinking series was created to push the med center out of the business-as-usual model and into creating the future, together, through appreciative inquiry.
Dr. Grover challenged his audience to do so, laying out the complexities of funding challenges, health and social inequities, physician shortages and a U.S. health care system that “has its quirks.”
“What is the ‘small-p’ policy that you are going to do differently. What are you going to do locally and rise to the occasion?” he asked.
He implored UNMC leaders to reach out to the communities they serve, make the business case for diversity and equity, be forthright and specific and demand others do the same.
“We need to think about principles not just of trust but of trustworthiness. How do we demonstrate to our communities that we are worthy of their trust?”
But most of all: “Who leads the conversation? I would argue that it’s you.”
The challenges facing academic medicine are relentless.
“But I have faith in you,” Dr. Grover said.
Dr. Gold’s reflection: “No question that we are a leading academic health science center that also is an anchor institution for the communities we serve.” One way to address these future complexities, Dr. Gold said, is to bring our communities together through health care access quarterly and economic development.
Access the recording of the Breakthrough Thinking session at this link.
Penfield led an interactive discussion on coaching and mentoring and coaching versus mentoring.
“Leadership,” Penfield said, “isn’t linear. That’s why our logo is a spirograph.”
Coaching, she said, is more thought provoking. Mentoring is often more thought providing. They are both effective tools in retention, “a lot less expensive than recruiting new talent.”
She asked attendees to remember that coaching and mentoring are “just a conversation with two humans” and urged them to listen with a “beginners’ mind.”
Several UNMC leaders shared the characteristics of their most cherished mentors.
Dr. Gold’s reflection on the session: “Listening and hearing, mindfulness and presence are important.”
Vite’s presentation was titled “Outside the box … if you build it, they will come,” on redesigning the academic medical center workspace through a shared coworking model.
Colorado’s “The Hub” was built as an amenity-rich interdisciplinary “collision” space. It didn’t catch on right away.
“Opening day was somewhat disappointing,” Vite said. “I was sitting next to the chancellor. I went home that night, and I said, ‘OK, I am going to be fired.’”
But it’s since become an unqualified success with 500 “members” and more than 130 on the waiting list. “The Hub” operates on a membership model – faculty must first agree to give up their private offices. In return, they get exclusive use of a red-carpet-club-like facility. It includes concierge service, food, sunlight and “a sense of belonging and caring and respect,” Vite said.
“The feedback I get from faculty members is I really feel valued. I feel valued. I feel respected, and I like to come to work.”
It also resulted in significant savings in real estate, construction, IT and overhead, Vite said.
Dr. Gold: “As we continue to plan and learn about spaces, we know that incidental collaboration versus forced collaboration is invaluable, and our experience in the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center has demonstrated that. One plus one does not equal two – it equals four. It equals 20.”
Dr. Gold summed up the morning: “I feel inspired, humbled, grateful – and energized as we go forward.”