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Welcome everyone to another
Becker's Healthcare podcast.

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I'm Ryan Muhammad with
Becker's Healthcare.

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I'm thrilled to have you have
with me today. Christine Young,

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chief nursing Officer at Akron
Children's. It's so nice to meet you.

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How are you today?

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I'm doing well, thank you.
Thank you for having me.

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Of course. Well I am so excited
to be speaking with you today. Um,

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and to begin,

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would you mind please introducing
yourself and telling us a bit about your

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background?

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Sure. Um, I'm Christine Young.

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I'm the Chief Nursing Officer
at Akron Children's Hospital.

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I've been in the role since 2017. Um,

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I've been a nurse for almost 30 years.

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I started my career as a clinical
nurse in a high risk obstetrics unit

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and I've been in nursing
leadership for over 20 years.

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So I came to Akron Children's
about 10 years ago. I was, um,

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overseeing the neonatal services
in the organization and then in

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2017, um, was promoted to the
chief nursing officer role.

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Wonderful. Well, with all that experience,

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I know you're gonna have some great
answers for us, Jay. Um, so Christine,

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would you mind, uh,

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jumping us off with a great answer
to my first real question? Um,

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it's what issues are you spending most
of your time on today in your field?

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So today is so different than how
the rest of my career has gone.

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Never have we seen more changes in
leadership and especially nursing

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leadership than we have during and,

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and during this time of the pandemic
and kind of emerging from the pandemic.

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Um, the two issues that I'm dealing
with most of the time, I think,

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go hand in hand. One is workforce.

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And I don't think that's an unusual thing
that for anyone to hear that we're all

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dealing with workforce and in
healthcare that's especially pertinent.

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And then how it impacts the ability, um,

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for our patients and family to
access services that they need.

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So those two really go hand
in hand and by me focusing

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energy on making sure that we have the
workforce that we need to make sure care

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is seamless and uninterrupted
for our patients and families.

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So thinking about
recruitment, um, retention,

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optimization of throughput for patients,

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really focusing on how do we maximize
our workforce and keeping them

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healthy in order to provide
that access for our patients,

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which is so very important today. Um,

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one of the other things I'm
spending a lot of time on,

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and I alluded to it a little
bit, is workforce health.

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It's been a difficult time over the
past three years for workers in the

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healthcare field and I think
paying attention to their, i'll,

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I'll say wellbeing and mental health,
cuz those are a little bit nuanced to me,

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but thinking about how we keep them well
and then how we provide the services

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they need, should they need them to
optimize their mental health as well,

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given the difficulties that
they're dealing with on a
day-to-day basis in their,

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in their everyday work.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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You brought up some great points and
kind of thinking about the future,

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how are you thinking about
investments and growth, um,

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in the next two to three years or so?

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So I think investing in
our people is critical.

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So looking at their development
and then looking at um,

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how do we create pipelines
for those with interest in

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going to the healthcare care field
and how do we make that attractive?

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So thinking about how to reach down
into the high school students and the

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college students earlier and engaging
them in conversation about what it is

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to be in healthcare and why it's
such a wonderful profession and, uh,

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how mission driven it is
to work in healthcare. So I
think investing in people,

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um, from a pipeline
recruitment perspective and
then as well from a retention

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perspective, um, thinking about what
do healthcare workers nurses need,

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how do we achieve that work-life balance
and healthy work environment for them?

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And then their development, their
professional development programs as well.

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One that we've I've recently
started is a rising nurse leader

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program to grow the healthcare
leaders of the future. Um,

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healthcare leadership has also been
difficult over the past three years.

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It's always been difficult,

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but it really brought to surface
a lot of issues over the,

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over the past three
years with the pandemic.

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And I think investing in growing
our leaders is incredibly

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important. So looking for
those high potential, um,

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people in the workforce and offering
them opportunities to start to develop

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those skills before they're in a formal
role so that they're ready to go when

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those roles do prevent present
themselves in um, a way to,

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to support succession
planning as well. Um,

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one of the other things that I always
think about when thinking about

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investments in the
future is digital health.

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How do we use technology to
leverage that work environment?

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How do we really help
the healthcare workers

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decrease the burden by automation? Um,

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we're looking at a virtual nurse program
and I know some other organizations

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have started testing those,

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so we're thinking about how does that
work in the pediatric environment.

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So really wanting to pilot a virtual
nurse program to help support the

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caregivers who are at the
bedside and giving um,

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an opportunity for nurses
to work virtually as well.
I think that's a big, um,

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issue today is a lot of people wanna
work remotely. There's some, um,

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benefits to that from a work-life
balance and how can we find that right

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balance, especially in the nursing
profession, which is so hands-on,

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but there may be able,

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we may be able to find some opportunities
to be innovative and creative around

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that.

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And those are the things that we need
to look at as when we think about how we

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optimize the workforce, um, in the future.

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Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree.
And before I let you go Christine,

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the last thing I wanted to ask you is
what are you most excited about right now?

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Whether that's something you're doing
personally or something that's happening

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in your field, anything like that?

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Yeah, I think, um, we're really on the,

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the starting block of how
we transform care delivery.

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So when we think about healthcare, we
all have our roles. So nurses have roles,

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physicians have roles, advanced
practice providers, therapists,

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every single member of
the healthcare team.

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And I'm really excited about
transforming those roles into delivery of

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care by a team,

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with everyone working to the top of
their scope and really that will improve

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access for patients as well.

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And everyone working together is that
healthcare team and I think we are really

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on the cusp of transformation
around that. Um,

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I think it accelerated with the
pandemic that we had a note,

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we had to do things differently because
doing things the way we've always done

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them is likely not
sustainable into the future.

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So that's really exciting cuz there's
endless possibilities about what those

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models of care could look
like and ultimately bene
benefiting the patients and

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families and supporting those high
quality outcomes that we're committed to.

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Absolutely. Thank you so much for
sharing those final thoughts with me,

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Christine. Uh, that is all
I have time for you today.

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So I wanna thank you again for joining
me and this has been a great discussion.

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I look forward to connecting
with you again soon.

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Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.