NWX-HHS HRSA HSB
Moderator: Venus Walker
03-28-18/1:00 pm CT
Confirmation # 7192226
Page 1
NWX-HHS-HRSA HSB
Moderator: Venus Walker
March 28, 2018
1:00pm CT
Coordinator:Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen-listen only mode. During the questionandanswer session please press Star 1 and record your name as prompted. Today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn today’s meeting over to Wendy Palmer. Thank you. You may begin.
Wendy Palmer:All right thank you. Good afternoon to some and good morning to others. On behalf of the Association of Multicultural Affairs and Transplantation and the Hospital Development Committee I'd like to say welcome to today’s Webinar entitled Hospital Partnership Best Practices.I would also like to thank Donate Life America and HRSA for their partnership in bringing this Webinar to you today. My name is Wendy Palmer and I am aHospital Development Liaison Specialist for LifeLink of Georgia. AndIco-chair the Hospital Development Committee for AMAT.
We have two speakers today that have together over 15 years of experience in hospital development. But before we hear from them we will listen to a few words from our illustrious AMATleader President MariaVeVe. MadamPresident?
Maria VeVe:Yes ma’am. ((Spanish Spoken 0:01:17)). Thank you so much. I am really taken back by all the participants as the names are starting to populate. I’m very, very excited. Wendy, fabulous job in putting everything together,speakers sound amazing. I have been very honored and a pleasure to have worked with all the young ladies that are presenting this afternoon and this morning for others like Wendy so likely stated earlier. I just want to just go over a couple of things,again welcome. AMAT, the Association for Multicultural Affairs and Transplantation we are here to serve. We're here to serve our partners in transplant field as they’re saving human lives in our diverse community. We are here for you. We welcome all memberships.
If you’re interested in AMATplease look into our Websiteamat1.org. Also know that we have an annual conference coming up September 19 the week of September 19, 2018 in the beautiful city of Las Vegas with our host Nevada Donor Network is hosting our conference.
The other piece of information I want to let everyone know very, very briefly is we have another upcoming Webinar with our partner DLA. And is Wendy so nicely stated we also partner with HRSA. The DLA Webinar will be May 9 and you’ll be getting more information regarding that with our partnership for ECHO.At this time I just want to hand it to Wendy. Thank you again. It’s been in honor and pleasure to serve and continue to serving AMAT and be here for everyone. Thank you.
Wendy Palmer:Thank you MadamPresident. Our first speaker today is Morgan Reid. Morgan began making a difference in the organ procurement organization world as a volunteer as she patiently awaited a kidney transplant. Soon after – sorry retrieving receiving a kidney transplant from a dear college friends she decided that she wanted to devote a career to raise awareness about this vital public health concern. Morgan graduated from Kean University with a degree in communication and has a passion for public speaking. She now works for LifeLink of Georgia as a Hospital Development Liaison.When she isn’t working she and her husband are busy chasing their 3-year-old daughter, traveling and spending time with family and friends. Morgan?
Morgan Kean:Thank you so much Wendy. Happy Wednesday everybody. It truly is a privilege to speak to you today on behalf of LifeLink of Georgia’s hospital development department. And thank you to AMATfor having me as a speaker. So today I am going to be talking to you all about strategies to maximize hospital development. So where do we begin?
One of the practices I learned early on in my HD career was to try to engage and build relationships with as many people as possible in the hospital. We want to get to know everyone from the top-down and bottom-up. Our goal is to weave donation into the cultural fabric of the hospital because we have to remember that 100% of what we do focuses on donation but donation is just a small percentage of what a hospital does. So it is our role to make sure that we're the face of donation in the hospital and to keep it in the forefront of their minds. And the way that we do that is by developing relationships with key people in the hospital.
This is a list of just a few people that we want to build relationships with in our hospitals. We want to get to know our unit nurses. Those are the people that are going to make the phone ring. But beyond knowing our unit nurses it’s very important that we know the clinical managers in our hospitals, the CNSes, the palliative care team, educators. Don’t take your unit secretaries for granted because they're the eyes on that unit. They know the culture of that unit and they can tell you more than the nurses can sometimes.
It’s also very important that we engage our C-suite. Our chief nursing officers, chief medical officers, CEOs,they should know who we are. We can’t hold people accountable for what they don’t know. And we want to make sure that we're engaging these people so that we create buy-in so that everyone again we're creating a – I’m sorry, we're weaving donation to the cultural fabric of the hospital.
And again in your hospitals you may have way more people or you may have way less people that you need to know. But these are some of the key people that we want to make sure that we're building relationships with in our hospitals.So once you’ve – now we that we know the these are the people that we want to get to know these are the people that we want to engage because remember the unit nurses they're going to be following direction from their leaders and we want to create a buy-in from them as well. So how do we make connections with all the people on the previous slide?
Networking,to me it’s very simple. We go into a hospital and we network. We just asks who’s who? Who are the movers and shakers,introduce yourself. And it takes some bravery to do that.
I introduce myself to everyone that I can. I’m pretty fearless. I don’t mind. I don’t wait for anyone to introduce me. We just have to put ourselves out there. And I think that’s a huge part of hospital development is that if you’re not extroverted you’re probably extroverted during your hospital development role because we are constantly putting ourselves out there. But make those introductions.
When I take over a new hospital one of the things that I do is I just walk around the hospital and I seewhosename is on the outside of the door.And sometimes I take my phone out and I take a picture of those names. And I may send an email later introducing myself, who I am, what I do, my purpose and my goals. I try to meet these people.
If there's a door open I again I’m pretty fearless. I’ll just knock on the door. I’ll have my card for every, introduce who I am. And if it’s an assistant that I’m speaking to I'll again I let them know who I am, what I do, my purpose and I’ll ask,"Hey would it be possible to get five minutes on the calendar of the chief nursing officer, the VP of patient care services to introduce myself as a way to establishing a relationship with these people?"
Again it does take some bravery. I say that I’m fearless and probably a little shameless too. When I'm in a hospital elevator I'll look at the name badge of someone and I’ll introduce myself. I’ll strike up a 30 second conversation in the hospital elevator just trying to get to know everyone. And I want everyone to try to get to know me as well. So this is how I go about making connections and how you made people to make connections too.
Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to any and everybody in the hospital. And once you’ve made those connections try to get on their meetings. Here’s a list of meetings that you can try to get onto. And I’m not going to say try. Like I fully believe and have faith in everyone that you can get on these agendas. The M&M meeting is a great place to talk about a recent case, the process, the protocol, what worked well, what didn’t.If you have a hospital that practiced a short turnaround this is a wonderful platform to talk about the emotions behind any recent cases that you had in your hospital.And that exec meetings are really important because we want to engage our physicians. These are the people that are going to be helping us to pronounce patients. They’re having conversations with our potential donor family so we want to make sure that we are garnering support from this group in the hospital as well.Nursing leadership, critical care committee meetings, this is a wonderful place to talk about data.
I always brought up always but I do try – if I have enough time I will bring a donor family speaker or a recipient speaker with me to these particular meetings. I'll share data. I’ll talk about performance. But I feel like when I’m speaking to nurses and I’m speaking to those critical care teams they connect with those donor family stories. They connect with those recipient stories. Unit Practice Council is a great place to talk about how a unit is performing. And I have found that if you have a hospital unit that’s performing you really well and then there’s maybe another hospital or unit in the hospital that’s having some difficulty bridging the gap between those two units have that one unit practice council that’s doing really well talk to the other units practice council to share best practices with them. And again by WebEx committee meetings, unit staff meetings try to get on all the agendas that you can.
Again I’m pretty shameless. I’m fearless. I will if there’s anyone that’s willing to give me five minutes to talk about donation I will. I don’t care if it’s to the auxiliary in the hospital. I may be talking to them about clinical practices or when to call LifeLink of Georgia but it's another group of people that I can try to affect change and create a dialogue when it comes to donation. And maybe the conversation that I have with that auxiliary group will translate into someone in that room talking to a family member, a church member, a best friend about the opportunities of donation. But again these are a list of meetings that are a great forum to talk about donation, how the hospital is performing, bring your donor family volunteers, your recipient speakers to talk about donation and how we can maximize the gift of organ and tissue.
So once you're on the agenda they’ve given you five minutes,ten minutes now what? What do you do? The first thing that you want to do is think about who your audience is, make sure you’re tailoring your presentation to the group that you’re speaking to. If you’re talking to your Performance Improvement Committee they’re going to want to know all about numbers. They're are not necessarily going to want to hear the fluff. But if you're talking to your unit staff meeting they want to hear the fluff because these of the people that are working very diligently on those organ donor cases and they want to hear the outcomes. They want to know their reward for their work.
When you finally get to your meeting I have to give the credit to there’s a woman by the name of (Stephanie Scotti). The first OPO that I worked for there was someone that – well (Stephanie Scotti) would come in and she would talk to our OPO about presentation skills. And one of her key strategies was make sure you have an icebreaker when you’re talking to people, when you have the chance to speak to in front of an audience about donation have an icebreaker. My icebreaker is typically my transplant story. It’s a way to get them to listen. It draws them in before I jump into my presentation or and I’ve told my transplant story to a group that I’m already speaking to or that has heard my story before I may say, "5000 people are waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant here in the state of Georgia."
Or if I’m speaking at one of my transplant centers I may open up with an icebreaker that says,"Did you know that 2000 people are on the waiting list just that your transplant center today?" That is my icebreaker because I want to draw them into what I’m getting ready to discuss again tailoring your presentation for your audience. Have a haymaker. If you’re starting off with an icebreaker have your haymaker, come and reaffirm your icebreaker and try to end your meeting with a call to action. Give an action item to the people that you’re speaking to hold them accountable for what you've just discussed with them.
You know, I – in hospital development there are times when it may be hard to stay engaged or we do the same thing over and over and over again and, you know, we're just trying to get more creative with how to keep everyone engaged. And these are a few strategies that we can use. Develop a strong donor council. Whether you have a hospital that does 20 plus donors a year or a hospital that doesn’t do any donors here, maybe they just focus on tissue and may be in those hospitals you don’t have a donor council quarterly or monthly. Maybe you do it twice a year. But develop a strong donor council with the people that impact the donation process in your hospital.
I never send out the invitation myself. I always have my main contact which is going to typically be the director of critical care or the chief nursing officer send out the invitation do all the councilmembers because they're more apt to attend. Emotional hardwiring is probably my favorite and most used strategy probably because I’m an emotional person myself. I can talk all day to the people in the hospital about data, about numbers. But what people will always remember is someone someone’s personal story.
So if you have the opportunity again bring your donor family and your recipients to your meetings. Bring your recipients back to the unit to say thank you to the staff, to the nurses to the doctors. Thank you for everything that you do. Because of all the work that you do I have a new heart. I was able to walk my daughter down the aisle because of my transplant. It just closes the gap for the hospital teams.
Another way to stay engaged is send data emails once a month. It’s really simple but it’s another touchpoint to stay engaged and to stay on the forefront of the minds of people in your hospital because again you cannot hold people accountable for information that they don’t know.Have anOPO guest speaker. Here at LifeLink of Georgia we have our clinical meetings and oftentimes we have guest speakers from hospitals come in and speak to us about different topics. That is a great way to engage someone in your hospital. So if you have a physician that maybe isn’t the biggest fan of your OPO but you know he's phenomenal at brain death, he’s great at donor management see if that person can come into your OPO to be a guest speaker on how we can collaborate together, talk about brain death tapping. Talk about donor management because again that just creates more of a trust and a bond between you and that physician.
And walk the walk. Don’t tell a hospital that you’re going to do something and you don’t follow through because that is a great way to ruin trust. Again as hospital development we are the face of the OPO so we want to make sure that we're developing great relationships but that we're being perceived as someone that is honest and hard-working and communicative. So make sure that you walk the walk.
So my motto in life -- and I learned this working here in the OPO world -- is be proactive versus reactive. And the way that we can be proactive is by making and building relationships with all the people that were mentioned on the previous slide because if you can give someone a heads up that something's going to happen and you can put things into motion to keep said thing from happening that’s being proactive versus reactive.When I sit down and I meet with my chief nursing officer or the director of critical care when I meet them for the first time I always ask.And again I’m pretty fearless because I feel like the only thing that people can do is tell me no. And I’m not afraid of no.
So one of the things that I ask when I meet with these people for the first time is,"Listen I’m here to support your team in any way that I can. But if I run up against a challenge and I need your help would it be okay if I called you? And I promise not to call you if I don’t need your help but would it be possible to have you as a contact?" And I’ve never had anyone say you’re out of your mind. I usually walk away with a personal cell phone or home number for those people. So again it’s about being proactive versus reactive and setting yourself up for success.