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Welcome everyone, to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I am Mariah Mohammed, writer and moderator with Becker's Healthcare,
and I'm absolutely thrilled to have with me today Lee Montgomery,
chief Nursing Officer at uc, Davis Rehabilitation Hospital. Lee,
it's very nice to have you on the podcast today. How are you?
Good. I'm good. Thanks for asking. How are you?
Good. Thank you for asking as well. Uh, and to get us started,
would you mind please introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your
background?
Sure, sure thing. Yeah. I'm Lee Montgomery, um,
and currently the Chief Nursing Officer for uc, Davis Rehabilitation Hospital.
Um, I'm a nurse by background, of course, um,
and been in healthcare for about 20 years.
Wonderful. Well, with your 20 years of experience,
the la the first thing I actually wanted to ask you is,
can you tell us about your most successful project or initiative from the last
year? Uh, what issues you were trying to solve and what drove the success?
Yeah, that's a really good question. So, um, like I said,
I'm currently the Chief nursing officer for, uh, uc,
Davis Rehabilitation Hospital. So we're a brand new facility in, uh, Sacramento,
California. And what I'm most interested,
or surpri I'm excited about is we just opened the facility and we, um,
had a, an acute rehab unit in a r u over at the medical center.
And then as we opened a new hospital that worked,
shifted over to our brand new facility,
so had the opportunity to open the hospital as the chief nursing officer and be
able to support the nurses as they moved over to our brand new facility.
So really excited about that. I think what really sticks out in my mind as a,
as a leader is being able to set the tone, especially when it comes to the, uh,
the culture, uh, for the new facility is what I'm most proud of.
Absolutely. What a great accomplishment. And as you know,
the clinical workforce has changed a lot in the last few years. Um,
what challenges are you still facing and how do you see the clinical workforce
evolving?
Yeah, that's a good question. It really has changed with the pandemic and, um,
it's been some learnings, um, um, just overall in healthcare and, uh,
specifically in nursing.
A couple things that have into my mind is some challenges that we had to work
through. Um, especially, you know, my,
my counterparts and other nursing colleagues.
What I hear out there is that there's definitely been a change, um,
with the level of commitment from the workforce.
So there's just so many different opportunities out there to travel to get
involved in whatever clinical area, uh, clinicians are interested in.
And so just the level of commitment has been really hard to hone down on, uh,
with their workforce. And so, um,
really looking at what are the drivers for our clinicians to be, uh,
staying in their role and how can we keep them committed and engaged, um,
into the work that they're doing has really been a challenge.
I've been really fortunate since we've been open for the last six months, uh,
you know, we had a very low turnover, so it's not something that we're seeing,
but we're always keeping our finger on the pulse of, you know,
how committed are our staff, what drives them to come to work every single day,
and, um, how can we keep their commitment? And the other, uh,
issue that we face is with the travelers, uh, in the workforce.
And so again, that, you know, sometimes travelers, they're,
they're really not committed to, um, especially the,
the quality of work that sometime has done.
And so that can be a challenge when you're really trying to drive the culture
for high excellence and commit to high quality, uh, care. Um,
sometimes when you have intermittent workforce involved, uh,
can be a real challenge.
Yeah, absolutely. I completely understand. And Lee, before I let you go,
the last thing I wanted to ask you is what is your best advice for aspiring, uh,
physicians and nursing leaders?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think the best advice I would say is really do what you're passionate about.
Find out what really, you know, what,
what do you wake up in the morning and you're excited about, um, doing,
whether that be, um, a, a particular clinical area or if it's, uh,
coaching or mentoring others. Um, if it's educating others, really, you know,
get behind what, what drives your passion, you know,
what are you passionate about?
The other thing I would say is really important is mentorship. You know,
find some strong mentors, um, maybe within your organization or,
and even external out in the community that can really give you advice and coach
you along the way and help and support you as you, uh, you know,
you're gonna make, uh, decisions that may not be, uh, the best,
but someone who can really support and guide you and get,
and give you that guidance, uh, that I've been very fortunate, uh,
for in my career. Um,
and then I think the other thing I would say is to make sure that you have a
roadmap, uh, to where you want to go.
And so that can look like looking out and,
and forecasting in the next 10, 20 years, where do you want to be?
And then drawing out or mapping out a, a road to how you get there. Um,
you know,
I've been very fortunate to have some great mentors along the way that have
coached and supported me and giving me guidance and, you know,
supported me when I made some,
some great decisions and were definitely my cheerleaders. And then were also,
um, willing to pick me up when I didn't make some, some, some, uh,
some the best decisions I would say,
but they just really allowed for me to bounce different ideas off of them and,
um, you know, just be really good thought partners with me.
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree, especially with the mentorship. Um,
well thank you so much for those final thoughts, Lee.
This has been an amazing discussion. So again,
I would like to thank you very much for coming on Becker's Healthcare and I look
forward to connecting with you again soon.
Sounds good. Thank you so much, Mariah.
Thank you.
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