Symbolism

I drove to St. Rowlf's for Leadership training this morning and black storm clouds gathered in my rear view mirror. It was a nice symbolism because I felt reassured that the storms are behind me. You know, metaphorically. I felt uplifted, thinking that the really tough "stuff" of this past year is truly behind me.

The Leadership training was great. The morning sessions were a bit slow, but they picked up momentum when we started talking about generational gaps and how to manage across the age differences. The afternoon session started with us all coming back from lunch to a room full of game boards...4x6 foot game boards, glass beads, and a several stacks of cards. It was a game! The boards represented hospitals and they had four units...ER, Surgery, ICU, and Tele (step-down). The glass beads represented patients and I was in charge of the ICU. You'd spin and wheel or draw cards to tell you how many patients presented to your ER or how many of your Tele staff called off sick or how you have an oxygen leak in the ICU and must take three beds out of service. We had to accommodate all the patients and go on ambulance bypass if our ER was too full.

The point was to think outside the lines, go beyond the "rules," and figure out how to adjust to events beyond our control. There was a nurse manager in my group and we both knew the adequate staffing ratios. So we sort of cheated and stretched our staff further than the "rules" allowed. But that's the scoop of real hospital life....when the unpredictable events happen, you have to flex your staff to accommodate that.

Our team worked well together but our assigned "administrator" took his job too seriously and barked at all the managers to push those patients through! Keep the productivity up! Keep the costs down! Keep the quality up! While the administrator can see the big picture of the whole house, he didn't understand the specifics of each department.

Em, yes. Duly noted! Lesson learned.

After the conclusion of the game, we received our profit and loss statements...our hospital lost $120,000 in one night because of incorrect staffing penalties. We weren't sure how to digest this, but we all knew the staffing ratios were well within safety parameters! It was a mental victory!

So after leadership training, I drove back to my Chicagoland pad. On the way, I noticed that the sky was divided in two. The west side was sunny with wispy clouds. The east side was stormy with gray clouds swirling. As I drove into the western sun, I realized that, while I am still in the midst of the storms and driving rain, the sunshine is filtering through and raising my spirits.