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- Welcome everyone,
to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Ryan Mohammed, writer
and moderator with Becker's Healthcare.
I'm absolutely thrilled to have
with me today Dr. Ralph Yates,
chief Medical Officer at Salem Health.
Doctor, it's very nice to have you on the
podcast today. How are you?
- I, I'm well, and thank you for having me.
- Of course. Well, to get us started,
would you mind please introducing yourself
and telling us a bit about your background?
- Of course. Uh, Ralph Yates.
I'm, uh, in my 44th year clinically in practice by,
by training and certification.
I'm a family physician.
I'm Chief medical officer of Salem Health in Salem, Oregon.
We are a two hospital health system, 6,000 employees
and medical staff.
We're located in the mid Willamette Valley area of Oregon.
Beautiful, beautiful area. Our main hospital is 644 beds.
We're a level two trauma and nicu,
and we service a catchment area of,
of roughly 500,000 citizens,
and we are the main hospital for that area.
- Wonderful, wonderful.
Thank you so much for giving us that background.
So to get us started,
could you tell us about your most successful project
or initiative from the last year?
What issues were you trying to solve?
And also what drove the Success
- Sale Health is, is, is focused around the whole concepts
of teams and teams solving problems.
Our initiative that I would, would address
and speak to involves staff development,
emotional and uh, clinical support development for
all members of our, our staff,
both nursing and medical staff.
There are three main initiatives that I've been involved
with over this last year.
One of them involves a very innovative program and,
and one that we have not modeled after anyone else,
and it's, it is called Ours Program Staff Engagement
and Resiliency Advocates,
and there are five of them that are,
are embedded within the organization right now.
These are are counselors.
They are crisis trained individuals.
Four of the five are, are actually in the, come from the
ministry profession and they're embedded within our,
our main health system soon, other areas as well.
And they're there to provide daily support for our nursing
and physician staff.
This, all this all was started initially in our emergency
department, it spreading out to others,
other areas of the hospital.
And then we, we survey how they're doing
and how our staff's doing using validated questions.
That friend of ours
and someone we work with closely,
Brian Sexton at Duke developed.
We look at emotional exhaustion, emotional thriving
and emotional recovery for the three areas and,
and the, the teams have had a direct impact on all three
of those parameters within our institution.
The other, the other program I had mentioned, second
of three is our peer support program
and some, some other institutions.
It's called Second Victims Program.
This is a unique program for us in that it has developed out
of or in concert with our Sierra a program,
and these are trained individuals that we train internally
and they're there to reach out to staff, both physician
and nursing staff when, when there are issues when,
when a case goes badly
and they're there to, they, they carry beepers
and they're there literally to reach the individual
and say, how are you doing?
The third program is one that we've just entered our,
our 13th year and it's PLI
and PLI stands for a Physician Leadership Institute.
It, it's a anachronistic in that it, the program
reaches more than just our physicians.
It involves our nursing staff, all
of our senior executives board.
We've, we've now graduated over 900
leaders through this program.
It's a four month long program, two days a month, Friday
and Saturday, once a month.
They work on quality improvement projects through their,
their four month experience
and then present them at the end of the program.
What's important about this program is it develops culture
and is an investment in people that go through it.
We have a 18 month waiting list to get into the program
is been a remarkable program in terms
of shaping the conversation here within our health system.
So it's cultural investment that, that, that I look to
and that I spend my time involved with here at Salem.
There's a cost to this and we have showed that cost
and the results are showing the benefits of that.
- Wonderful. Thank you so much for giving us all
that information about a very successful project.
It seems, as you know,
the clinical workforce has changed a lot
in the last few years.
What challenges are you still facing
and how do you see the clinical workforce evolving?
- Everything has changed as a result
of the last three and a half years.
I'm, and I know I don't speak alone
in this regard, but our, our nursing staff overnight, many
of them changed.
The senior experienced nurses chose outpatient work
or in some cases left the profession.
We have just a whole lot
of new grads on our floors
and my concern for the medical staff is
that we not see the same thing happen,
and that's a, a big effort of mine
and the staff I work with here to support them
to round, to be with them
and hopefully we keep them within the practice of medicine.
But I think what we're seeing as we come out of Covid is
that this really is the most complex chapter in this book
of Covid, the one we're in right now.
There's just such significant change
that's taken place culturally within the nursing and,
and medical staffs.
- Absolutely. Thank you so much for giving us that insight.
And Doctor, before I let you go, last thing I wanted
to ask you is, what is your best advice
for aspiring physician nurse leaders?
- Get outta your office, get out on the floor round.
Spend time with staff.
Actually talk to them and take the time to hear
what they tell you and listen to their stories.
They, their stories have meaning
and it's important for us as leaders
to take the time to hear those stories.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much for sharing
and giving us those final thoughts.
Doctor, this has been an amazing
and informative discussion, so again, I wanna thank you
so much for coming on Becker's Healthcare
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Maya.
- It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations
to keep learning, stay sharp, grow their networks
to help our audience better do this in a more simplified,
personalized, and meaningful way.
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