Leveraging Social Media for Quality (and Self) Improvement

 

TIL (Today I learned)* something new from my nephew. He studies software engineering and is one of those young people really plugged into the digital world, always clicking away on his electronic devices. While I was digressing about my twitter activity, he suggests me to try reddit, a popular social media platform. I heard about it, but never tried it, so am now feeling a bit overwhelmed...just another “internet thing” I have to try now, when I am barely a "joiner" on the social media ladder! Still, what do I have to lose? Perhaps I could use this new tool on my QI journey?

So here I am on reddit. I find out that "This is a place friendly to thought, relationships, arguments, and to those that wish to challenge those genres." The stats are impressing:

Take me to the forest: Changing hospital culture

We recently had a staff meeting where a guest speaker prepared a presentation about communication. At one point in the presentation, the speaker encouraged the audience to play the telephone game, in an attempt to illustrate how messages are distorted while they are passed from one person to another. This innocent game, where one person whispers the message to the next person and then through a line of people until the last person loudly announces the message to everyone, took an odd turn. And rather than making me think about communication, it brought back a difficult question on hospital culture: How can we change the insidious culture of “name, shame and blame” that still exists? Why can we not see the forest, and focus solely on the trees?

The Challenges of Change Agents

 

I don’t know about others, but when I think of my own improvement attempts on my unit, I usually recall challenges, resistance, hitting walls. Yes, I was told it will be difficult, and once you realize that you are not alone in your passion, it is even harder to get back to the daily whirlwind. It is discouraging, and some days are worse than others. And then I am thinking: for sure others have the same challenges, but does it make a difference if you would be in a formal position of authority rather than front-line staff? Would you be able to influence and leverage more for your ideas?