Content area
Full text
One of my first experiences with systems thinking in healthcare happened quite early in my time with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). I was called upon to facilitate the national nursing executives meeting to help them develop a revised statement of practice.
One major event during that meeting massively changed perceptions, the type of change we healthcare systems engineers look for as a positive sign that we are making a difference. And as my former Navy commander always said, "Perceptions are reality."
The discussion ventured into the lengthy topic of what was thought at the time as the next big direction, patient-driven care - not patientcentric care. Theoretically, in a patient-driven system the patient guides the care pathway as an active participant. To explain this, I took my career into my own hands and went out on a limb with that group of accomplished nurse executives and questioned their deeply held perceptions.
I asked them to all hand their badges to me. I looked at the...