Happy Thanksgiving to my UC Riverside Health Family:

We are approaching one of my favorite holidays – Thanksgiving. It’s a time when we can pause and reflect on what we are grateful for – the people, opportunities, events, organizations, or other elements – that have profoundly impacted our lives for the better. Everything and everyone around us determines who we are.

As we think about gratitude, we should also consider how we have worked collaboratively through the events or challenges we have faced. Change initiatives require resilience to focus on what is possible, and to overcome barriers that might arise. Resilience and collaboration allow us to adapt, bounce back, and thrive in adversity, stress, or difficult situations.

Resilience

Resilience involves emotional strength, mental flexibility, and the capacity to withstand setbacks. It’s an essential capability as it enables an individual or organization to work effectively through challenges, difficulties, and barriers, learn from these experiences, and emerge stronger. It empowers individuals and organizations to face challenges with greater confidence and courage.

The ability to remain resilient is essential in healthcare, where we routinely have exacting standards around clinical quality, an emphasis on creating excellent clinical outcomes, high-level expectations for service, and operating in a high-reliability process environment. Here are some proven strategies you can use to enhance your resilience in your workplace and personal life.

• Prioritize Self-Care: Maintaining enough rest, eating well, and prioritizing regular exercise.
• Reduce Stress: Use techniques and tactics to manage stress; this may include meditation, stress reduction, or mindfulness.
• Create a Support Network: A strong support network of friends, colleagues, and family can be a welcome ear to listen to your issues.

Gratitude

Gratitude is the act of being thankful and appreciative of the people, experiences, and things in one's life. In many ways, gratitude is the physical manifestation of resilience. It’s the process of recognizing, identifying, and acknowledging the acts and kindness received and results in improved well-being, reduced stress, and enhanced relationships. Gratitude and resilience are connected to overall well-being, and both can lead to a more fulfilling and contented life by emphasizing the positives in our lives.

Expressing gratitude is a simple yet powerful way to foster positive relationships and well-being so I urge you to take the time to say thank you, listen to others, and occasionally, do something “just because”. It’s a wonderful way to pay gratitude forward.

Going forward

We will be continuing to look at collaborative opportunities to reduce the time and workload associated with the work you do every day for our patients. In fact, over the past few months, we have put into place several large-scale change efforts to improve our processes to make your work easier, more efficient, and more rewarding.

• On October 25, we transitioned to a new phone system, demonstrating our commitment to transforming patient access and streamlining the quality of our care and service.
• We’re continuing to expand on Rooming Encounter Success, improving the patient experience by reducing wait times and addressing quality metrics and care gaps during each visit.
• We’ve begun instituting re-training to standard work processes and our Epic system to guarantee a successful rollout of the new processes.
• We’re also celebrating 100% of health screening information captured during the rooming process.

To accomplish our goals efficiently, we are also developing a two-way communications system that will help us achieve meaningful results, and support our resilience as an organization. Today’s staff huddles allow managers to capture feedback in real-time, and we need to build upon best practice models like these to make information available for everyone, not just management. Success relies on collaboration around timely sharing of information and listening - to each other, and our patients.

Let me close by returning to the overall theme of November, giving thanks. There is a lot of change going on, and we want you to have a voice and a role in these efforts. I want to say thank you for all your hard work this year - every one of you is important to UCR Health, and to me personally.

I’m looking forward to all that’s ahead and to accomplishing it with resilience and yes, gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving.