The healthcare industry has become notoriously complex. As a patient, navigating the system can be overwhelming.

The same is true as a clinician or healthcare administrator. There are mountains of bureaucracy and administrative paperwork.

But if you ask anyone why they became a doctor or got into healthcare in the first place, the likely response would be – to help people.

Any business, any organization is about people. Made up of people, run by people, serving people. That people service is especially obvious in healthcare, where everyone exists to serve a patient’s health.

But there is a people problem in healthcare.

Healthcare has the second highest employee turnover rate of any industry. Nurse turnover was 17% in 2018.

Physicians are burning out at an unprecedented rate. According to a national physician survey, 42% of physicians are burned out, meaning they have a long-term, unresolvable, job-related stress that leads to exhaustion, cynicism, feelings of detachment from job responsibilities, and lack a sense of personal accomplishment.

What can you do about it? How can we reverse the trends, for the health of our organizations, for the health of our people, and for the health of our patients?

The episode’s guest is an expert in organizational transformation, Mr. Alastair Steward.

Alastair is currently an organizational transformation consultant at The Ready, where he helps teams and organizations realize a more adaptive, meaningful, and human way of working.

Alastair has held leadership positions, developed teams, and cultivated organizational change along the way. He has coached people at every level of organizations, including CEOs, on the people side of strategic decisions, cultivating true leaders capable of fantastic organizational transformation in the process.

Book recommendations

1. Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux – https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

2. The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge – https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/163984/the-fifth-discipline-by-peter-m-senge/

3. The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier – https://boxofcrayons.com/the-coaching-habit-book/

4. Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan – https://www.bravenewwork.com/

Other notes

Buurtzorg and self managed teams – https://www.buurtzorg.com/

Daniel Pink – https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation

Misty rock climb – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wep1cKBNzCk

Squeeze the Trigga rock climb – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWbJddoD3B4

Alastair on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastairsteward/

Alastair on Twitter – https://twitter.com/AlastairSteward