Recognizing Excellence

Beyond Success In the new and explosive era of today’s healthcare, technologies have become the dominant institutional focus for success. Yet The Toledo Hospital relies on a different sort of foundational blueprint, one that has led our cath lab team beyond success and into the realm of significance. Significance is an attitude of choice that inspires excellence and is expressed through purposed people whose values dictate limitless possibilities of superior outcomes. It is what highlights a great medical institution. At The Toledo Hospital, the most integrated hospital in the nation, we have reached a state of significance. Ironically, it has not been established merely through our hospital’s comprehensive integration of healthcare technologies. It is founded in the talents (values) of our people. Significance in the cardiac cath lab is by no means an accident; it is by design. A design not founded through indoctrination into administrative rule or policy, but resulting from the values of each individual who makes up the lab. I truly believe that by giving our people the freedom to develop their individual talents, Toledo Hospital cath lab has created an attitude of excellence that is simply unmatched, while promoting an atmosphere so brimming with character that it has become the physicians’ institution of choice in the area a most notable strategy in today’s competitive healthcare arena. Significance is by design, as previously stated. It is never by chance. It is a result of the careful nurturing of individual values within the lab by each member of the team, in an effort to create an atmosphere of unity that also promotes individual talent. This promotion of values is not intended to be a product of tolerance. On the contrary, it promotes excellence in every individual. By helping each person to develop his or her individual talents within the value structure established by the whole group, the team is able to obliterate holes, gaps and/or weaknesses to better find its absolute potential. Let’s take a look into what has set The Toledo Hospital cardiac cath lab on a course that has surpassed success and moved it into a position of significance. Several valuable characteristics have led this lab beyond success: quality, trust, purpose, belief and commitment. Please remember these key elements are not manipulated. They are talents (values) that must be developed naturally over time within the individuals of the team. The single most important of these elements is quality. I am not merely speaking of workmanship; I am speaking about the individuals who are the actual composite of the lab. The people at the cardiac cath lab at The Toledo Hospital are all quality individuals. Some institutions spend their time manipulating data to show that the work they do is of good quality. At the Toledo lab, quality is not merely some abstract quantitative value to strive for; instead, quality defines our people, and the offspring of their labors is excellence. As a result, they can enjoy the freedom to trust one another. Trust is a most important expressed value of this lab. Nothing significant can ever be created without trust. Since our team members can trust in each other, they can manage far more than one could possibly do alone. The more intense the situation, the more they intuitively work as a team, so that troubles begin to melt away and potential solutions surface to replace anxieties. This trust also allows each person let down their guard, share of themselves and even become vulnerable without risk of personal harm. With great intensity they work and play, laugh and cry, fight and make up, without the fear of lingering tensions. It is their trust in one another that is the unified strength of this cardiac lab. Next is purpose. These people know who they are and why they are at work - it is to genuinely care for very scared and many times hurting people. Please, don’t let anyone stand in their way, lest they be trampled underfoot! These people have vision and passion. At a glance, there are times it may appear that their vision and passion is not wholly in line with the organization, but that is not troubling when you know their heart is always toward the patient. They don’t talk much about purpose or passion, but it is expressed in all that they do and is essential to the experience of every patient that enters the lab. Their vision is always keenly focused on the patient at hand, who will most likely forget about them by day’s end; yet that same patient means the world to the cath lab team while the patient is in their trusted care. Why all this? Who really cares? They do! Everyone in this lab believes in what they are doing and they also believe they are the very best or soon will be the very best at what they do. Their belief in themselves and each other actually becomes the catalyst between life and death; changing the very destiny of those they care for. Yet, there is no boast of greatness. They believe this is what they here are to do, because it is who they are. Finally, yet not lightly expressed, is their commitment to their patients, the institution and their profession. Their commitment is more than a personal choice, it is an attitude that rises from the core of their individual being and expresses itself in the work they do. Their commitment removes mere circumstance and chance from patient outcomes, replacing it with the desire to change lives. They choose to bring those who are dying back to life, and seldom does death have power over them. Their commitment leaves no room for compromise. They won’t have it! Each day each person brings 100% of what they are to the lab, leaving nothing behind, knowing that tomorrow will look much like today - a full board with emergencies that have neither time nor place to be done. It is not enough in today’s competitive healthcare arena to be content in the belief, if we build it, they will come. Technologies are a powerful incentive, but still the most important structure to build into the cardiac cath lab is the character of the individuals within it. Quality work can only be performed by quality people. Allow your people to grow with one another and you design a cardiac cath lab that supercedes success and touches the plane of significance. I write this as an expression of gratitude to a people who have allowed me to lead and serve them. As I always wish I could do more to express my thanks toward the hard work that is done as they serve others. I share their values, in this way, with you. They make my job as Director of Cardiac Services at The Toledo Hospital very simple keep obstacles out of the way so they can significantly change people’s worlds. Thanks everyone! Jeff Shaferly, Cardiac Services Director, The Toledo Hospital, jeff.shaferly@promedica.org

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