Soojin Jun, PharmD, BCGP, CPPS, CPHQ ❤️

Teamwork is an art to be mastered together. Just because you haven’t thrived in one environment, it doesn’t mean it is your failure. Knowing your weakness head on is a good awareness to have and whether you will have supportive environment about them can be the game changer whether you will thrive in the environment or not. While you may have influence on environment to a degree, you may not in many cases, as healthcare is hierarchical in structure most of the time. It is a different story if the hierarchical nature is challenged and may bring better outcomes and innovations to thrive, as hierarchy seems to be rate limiting step in innovations in healthcare. However, anything in healthcare needs to be done carefully and kindly. 😉

There are many ways we can advocate and it takes a courage and a village to advocate in often trauma afflicting healthcare environment. You will need help and expand your network for your clients! It is not about you and that mindset will give you freedom to detach from taking things personally. You are the guiding light in the darkness for these patients and caregivers. It is an honor and a privilege to earn that trust!

Communication is the key skill to learn after traditional schooling is over and it is not taught enough in schools. The ‘care’ aspect of healthcare is often underestimated but so essential and necessary. It is helpful to remember there is the aspect of spirit in human beings, often neglected in modern healthcare.

Everyone’s needs are different and have different contexts. While staying informed on resources is one aspect of the needs, staying informed on the individual needs of the patients is quite essential and often missed because timely and constant updates are not in places in their care. Staying informed means being open and creating channels of communication. Advocates are like alchemists of solutions that combine the information from patients, caregivers, and resources, guiding the patients and caregivers to the best possible care solutions.

Empathy is not easy, yet so essential in healthcare. Knowing how broken our health system is, however, I would like to challenge people in healthcare and outside of healthcare to think differently that it is available when healthcare professionals can get proper self care. So it is essential to make the environment to foster empathy where healthcare workers have rooms to heal themselves, get proper breaks, and are treated humanely. How can they provide empathetic care when their own basic needs are scarce? We have observed this during the pandemic and I hope patients and caregivers can realize the connectedness too. While it is understandable to demand caring healthcare, we are in progress to make that a reality in many cases.

This is easier said than done, especially in healthcare. Psychological safety, essential element to foster growth of EI, is often not there in many settings for various reasons. Healthcare is a big umbrella word and each setting has its unique challenges. It can be highly dependent on the risks, regulations, ability to have team based learning and activities, who sets the tone of meetings, who leads the meetings, the roles and expectations, etc. So how do you create the psychological safety? It is all about power. Who has the perceived power in the group? It will be helpful if that person can be vulnerable. Then the perceived power dynamic gets challenged and people can be more open very naturally, which will change the team dynamic.