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From Bedside Nurse to Healthcare Executive: Crystal Farmer's Leadership Journey at Augusta Health · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:12
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:15
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
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today's guest is Crystal Farmer, Senior Vice President and Chief
0:22
Operating Officer at Augusta Health.
0:25
They are one of the top community hospitals in America
0:28
recognized for patient centered care and membership in the Mayo
0:32
Clinic Care Network. They offer a wide range of
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healthcare services focusing on operational excellence, high
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quality treatment and compassionate patient
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experiences. Now, under Crystal's leadership,
0:46
the organization has earned top marks for patient outcomes and
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expended expanded its clinical services while streamlining
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operations. She has more than 28 years of
0:58
experience in nursing and healthcare leadership, including
1:02
roles as Chief Nursing Officer at Augusta Health and other
1:06
prominent hospitals in Richmond, VA.
1:09
She is also a member of the American College of Healthcare
1:12
Executives and the Virginia Organization of Nurse Executives
1:16
and Leaders. Her dedication to continuous
1:19
improvement has helped Augusta Health remain A vital resource
1:23
for its community, providing care with advanced technology
1:27
and compassionate ServiceNow. Before we get into all that good
1:31
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Add Back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:03
today, the Senior VP and COO of Augusta Health, Crystal Farmer.
2:08
I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
2:11
Oh, I'm so grateful that you asked me.
2:13
This is a real honor, so thank you.
2:15
Absolutely. Let's jump right in, Crystal.
2:17
What was it that first drew you into the healthcare industry?
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You know, I, I don't have the same story and journey as most
2:26
people that go into healthcare and they, they've known since
2:29
they were a child that they wanted to be a nurse or a doctor
2:33
and help people. You know, for me, it was a
2:37
little bit of a different story. I had a different career path in
2:40
mind and I got hit by a drunk driver.
2:44
And so my career path originally was going to be going into the
2:47
military and we got in a car accident and we were hit by a
2:50
drunk driver and I injured my back.
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And so it was not eligible anymore.
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And so then I thought, and this is right out of high school.
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Well, now what? Because that was my plan.
3:02
And I took a year off. I went to nursing certified
3:05
nursing aid school and started working as a nurse's aid in a
3:09
nursing home and just got to see healthcare from a different
3:12
perspective. But I also remember, I also
3:18
remember my mom being an office manager for a doctor's office
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and the two nurses in there, I just always, they, they always
3:27
wore white and the way they talk to the patients and, and I knew
3:31
them most of my life. And so I started thinking back
3:34
at, well, I want to be able to do that.
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I want to be able to talk to people and help people.
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And so I decided to go to nursing school.
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And my first day in nursing school, they load you up with
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the books and they came up to my shoulder and I thought, what am
3:49
I in store for? And but I have never looked
3:53
back. You know, there are things
3:54
happen for a reason. And I think my path was not
3:58
supposed to be in the military. It was exactly what I'm doing
4:00
now. I've never looked back.
4:03
When did it click for you? When did it like, feel right?
4:07
I think in my first semester of nursing school, and actually it
4:10
clicked a little bit before that, because that's what made
4:13
me want to go to nursing school, is being a nursing assistant and
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helping patients that couldn't help themselves and seeing them
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and situations where, you know, they can't even lift a cup so
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they can get a drink when they want to.
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And seeing patients in this vulnerable state and being the
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one that can make them more comfortable or offer an
4:35
encouraging word or just have a conversation with them.
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When you're in a room, you're very isolated.
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And, and so I started seeing the power of nursing even when I was
4:47
a nurse's aide. What was maybe the most
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formidable stop for you before getting to Augusta Health?
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I, you know, there's so much that's happened over, you know,
5:02
28 years sounds like a long time, but it doesn't feel that
5:06
that long. I think when I first became
5:09
ACNOII did not think that I was CNO material necessarily and I
5:16
had a leader that believed in me and really didn't give me a
5:19
choice not to be, which I have to one day.
5:24
I'll have to tell him how he's impacted my career, but.
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Do you want to OfferUp his name? Do you have a little shout out
5:31
here? His name is Will.
5:33
He was Aceo at Henrico. And I don't think he knew what
5:40
he was doing at that moment, but and how many, how much it's
5:43
opened up my world, but it certainly has.
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And and so I appreciate his faith in me, but I think what?
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Do you think he. Saw at that time I was really at
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this point in my career of where do I go next?
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I was a director, felt like I could do more, but my my
6:02
confidence was not great. And so I was really at probably
6:07
the third or fourth crossroads in my career.
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What do I do now? I mean, there's been many things
6:13
over the years. What is it that you think that
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that CEO first saw in you that maybe you were having trouble
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seeing in yourself at that time? Results, if you know, when
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people ask me sort of what's your reputation and at any
6:32
organization that you work in, it's, it's really around getting
6:37
things done. You know, I, I have very high
6:40
expectations of myself and others, which is not always a
6:43
great trait, but I do not give up.
6:48
And I love being being able to be creative enough in my roles
6:55
to problem solve and not just do things the way everybody else
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sees it. So if I get a know, I'm going to
7:01
figure another way to do it because maybe it's not this way,
7:05
but it's this way. And I think he'd seen me take a
7:08
couple of challenging areas that I was in charge of and really
7:12
turn them around into a place where people wanted to work,
7:16
physicians wanted to put their patients there.
7:18
And that was no small feat. And so I think he knew I was
7:22
tenacious because where he put me for my first C&O role, it it,
7:27
you needed to be tenacious, you needed to be a good problem
7:30
solver and you needed to be able to connect with people.
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The hospital was very small. The census was around 30 a day
7:39
and it was not doing well. And they had a new CNO and a new
7:46
CNO as well. And so between the two of us, we
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really, it was in the red for quite a few years.
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And in our first year there, we were in the black.
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And it's because we did those things.
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Did what things? What were you able to do?
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Connection, mainly it's connection, but the hospital was
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at the bottom of our the bottom for patient experience in the Ed
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and inpatient. We were, we did not have great
8:10
employee engagement scores. So our employees were not having
8:15
a great experience working there.
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Morale was very low. Our physicians did not feel
8:20
heard. They didn't feel like they had a
8:21
voice. And then our census was
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dropping. So patient, you know, physicians
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weren't admitting to us either. And so we had a great staff.
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But how do we motivate? How do we say this is different?
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How do we invest in them? And, you know, the best
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investment is time. So both her and I, you know, we
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met frequently with the staff. I put in quite a few tactics
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around patient experience and I can share that story about the
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things that that we put in place, but it was really about
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connecting not just with our patients, but with our frontline
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staff and being vulnerable honestly for a lot of that.
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You know, one of the things that that happened in my first role
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as a chief nursing officer is my mother was in, was burned over
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60% of her body. And this was in my first
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probably 6 months of being a new CNO.
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And I just, you know, the hospital is not, she's not in my
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hospital, but a hospital that was not far from me.
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And so in the evenings I would go and visit and she was there
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for eight months. So it's a long process.
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And during that time she, she had all kinds of infections.
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She had catheter associated infection, she had bloodstream
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infection, she had pneumonia, just she had a blood clot, just
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all sorts of different things. But what made a difference in
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that hospital visit and and that hospital time period that I take
10:07
with me now to every role that I do there?
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My mom was actually, she went into cardiac arrest and while I
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was there and the team really rushed into the room and, and
10:21
started working on her. And I'm, you know, even though
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I'm a nurse, I'm standing at the, at the bedside and, you
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know, nurse training goes out the window when when you see
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that and it's your own family member.
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And in the middle of it, the nurse manager turned over what
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she was doing in the code to somebody else and came out and
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talked to me. And, you know, she said, I I
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know that, yeah. Your relationship has not been
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great with your mom for the last few years.
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I know how she got here was not something you're proud of.
10:55
My mom was addicted to narcotics, prescription
11:00
medications, and and she just wasn't an easy patient.
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And she said, we don't care about any of that right now in
11:08
this memo. What I care about is, are you
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OK? What can I help you do right
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now? And we're going to take the best
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care of her. None of those other things
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matter. And you're right here where you
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need to be. And, you know, it was just a few
11:24
words, but it was the feeling that I was understood that, you
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know, people were not judging my mother for her lifestyle or
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judging me for our relationship. But in the moment, it was all
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about taking care of her. And nothing else mattered.
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And so I remember taking that back to my hospital as we were
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trying to figure out, you know, how do we improve our patients
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experience at our hospital? And I took it back to my nurse
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leaders and I had to be very vulnerable.
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It's still difficult to tell the story now about all the things
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that I saw in the the consequences of her just being
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in the hospital for a long time. But if I had to rate that
12:09
hospital, I would have rated it great because of the human
12:13
connection. You know, bad things happen, but
12:17
that nurse manager coming out to me and then calling me later to
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check on me and give me an update on my mom.
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And then she made a point every time I came to the hospital to
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say how are things going? And just really build that
12:30
relationship. There was a human, the human
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connection there that I knew that she understood.
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And so I took that back to my team of I think what we're not
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doing for our patients is making them feel like a human, like we
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care about them or their families, like we care about
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them. You know, all healthcare
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providers, we go to school, we're highly trained, we know
12:53
what what to do. And so we save people's lives
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every day. But I don't get letters about
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saving people's lives. What I get letters about is how
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we made somebody feel why they were here or didn't feel while
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they were here. They don't expect to be treated
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like family. They don't expect to really
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connect with a stranger in a hospital.
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And so we really worked on the leadership team and I really
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worked on making sure that we were rounding on the patients.
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They're going to see patients every single day.
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The nurse leaders asking those questions.
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It's not just about how you feel today, but what's going on in
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your in your life outside of here.
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Are you worried about your dog at home?
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How can we help that? You know, I heard today's your
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birthday. It's making connections to the
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human side, not just the patient or the diagnosis or the room
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number. And that was really the trick.
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I call it the secret sauce. It's not so secret is it's just
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about connections. And we shall saw our patient
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experience go to the top. How quickly did that transition
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happen from the bottom? Six months 6.
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Months. So it's incredible that you took
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this very challenging experience with your mother and the
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interactions that you had as a result, and it turned this light
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bulb on inside your head. It's like this is what we're
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missing. You know where I work?
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How? You know when you brought this
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idea to the teen there, How was it received?
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Did everybody agree with you? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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Let's start doing this. Was there some resistance?
14:30
Oh, there was certainly resistance in the, in the first
14:32
resistance, which is normal for everybody of you're asking me to
14:34
do another thing. I'm, I'm so busy.
14:37
I'm, I'm trying to put out fires and you're asking me to do
14:39
another thing. And you know, it takes a good
14:42
hour or so, if not longer to see every patient on a particular
14:46
unit round on them and have a meaningful connection.
14:50
And so we practice that. I went with them.
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I wasn't asking them to do something that I wouldn't do.
14:55
We practice rounding. You know, we did a lot of
14:57
training upfront because for some people that's not a natural
15:01
conversation to have. You know, we're so used in the
15:04
medical field of having a conversation about your health,
15:07
but not necessarily a human to human conversation about just
15:11
you. And, and so we did a lot of
15:14
training upfront. We did a lot of practicing
15:16
upfront. And I, I asked them, I said, can
15:21
you just trust me on this? Just do it long enough and if it
15:26
doesn't work, then I will make you do it.
15:28
And within that short time, it was less than six months when
15:31
they started seeing the results of their patient experience and
15:33
reading comments about how the patient still cared about like
15:37
they were family. I didn't need to even ask him to
15:40
do it anymore. I didn't need to tell him to do
15:42
it anymore because they saw that it worked.
15:44
And it was the same thing with our quality metrics.
15:46
I mentioned that my mom had a lot of infections in the
15:50
hospital. And when you're in leadership
15:55
and you probably see this too, is sometimes you can be so
15:57
metric or number driven. And I think I was starting,
16:03
especially as AC and O, there's a lot of information coming at
16:06
you reports. And so then you just start
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thinking, OK, this we're number, this number's in the red.
16:12
We need to get it to the green. And what we forget sometimes is
16:16
that behind every single one of those infections is an, is a
16:19
patient that we did harm to. And that's the way I look at it,
16:23
you know, not intentionally did they get an infection, but they
16:27
had something that they did not come in with.
16:29
And so we handled in our quality metrics also went very high in
16:34
the company top percentile. And it was because we started
16:38
thinking about patients as there's a number, there's a
16:40
patient behind every single one of these numbers.
16:43
And if it was my mom, if it was your sister, you know, would you
16:47
do something differently? And my team came back and said,
16:49
yes, we would probably do this differently.
16:52
And so it was just a lot of those vulnerable conversations
16:56
and sharing my experience. And so obviously, you took these
17:01
learnings, these lessons, these experiences with you as you made
17:05
other career stops, including to Augusta or maybe they were
17:08
already doing something like that when you got there.
17:10
I don't know. For Augusta, the patient
17:15
experience has always been middle of the road.
17:18
OK, not bad, but not always great either.
17:22
It may not have stood out and I took the same things.
17:28
The first thing that I implemented here with my team
17:31
was nurse leader rounding on all patients and that was a little
17:36
bit of a a challenge. Again, you know, time is so hard
17:39
to come by when you're in leadership or healthcare in
17:43
general. And change is always hard.
17:45
Yeah, there's so many things that happen in a day to a
17:49
patient. You can't schedule those things.
17:52
It's uncontrollable. That's why they're in the
17:54
hospital. And.
17:55
And so anyways, you know, I did the same exact thing, created
17:59
training and said just do this for three months, let's see how
18:04
it works. And it was the exact same story
18:07
that the the units and the managers that really took it
18:11
seriously to go and meet every single patient and make that
18:15
human connection with them. Their patient experience scores
18:19
went to the top percentile. And so it was just sort of
18:23
another experiment. And so others, you know, really
18:26
started doing that as well. And and it's just an
18:29
expectation. I think this is a, a really
18:32
great story to share with the audience and, and folks that are
18:37
listening. I, I want to encourage you to
18:39
sort of think about this in the context of your own daily lives,
18:42
your work life, your home life, because this really highlights
18:46
the importance and the value of genuine human connection.
18:50
So you might not work in healthcare, maybe you're in an
18:52
office setting, but what wonders would it do to your
18:56
relationships with other folks? You show it a genuine interest.
19:01
You ask them how they're doing. You listen for the answer the
19:04
next time you see them, you ask about that thing that you just
19:07
talked about, right? And we did the same thing with
19:09
our team members. So if it works with patients and
19:13
we only see them, you know, this much of time of their entire
19:15
life, we see their employees every every day, you know, 52
19:19
weeks a year. And, and so we did the same
19:22
thing and requested the same thing of what would happen if
19:27
you sat down with all of your team members for 15 minutes a
19:31
month and just asked how they were doing and what's going
19:36
well, what's not going well? Are there challenges, What can I
19:40
do to help? And again, it wasn't necessarily
19:43
about the job, but it was about making a human connection.
19:46
And again, those were the areas where in the the leader really
19:49
put the time in 15 minutes a month is not much.
19:54
And the return on investment on that time investment, you can't
19:58
even measure it, but they felt cared about it.
20:00
So when we do employee surveys and the managers scored high,
20:04
it's because they felt cared about it.
20:06
And that's what they say in their comments.
20:08
That's great. OK, so Crystal, how did the
20:11
opportunity to join Augusta first come about for you?
20:14
Yeah. So actually it was those
20:17
recruiter e-mail cold calls, those work, you know, sometimes
20:24
it's you're, I think the recruiter is like, maybe today's
20:27
the day that somebody wants to look for a new job.
20:30
And I wasn't not looking for a job.
20:31
I was very happy in my role. I was already a chief nursing
20:34
officer at my second hospital. I'd already been with the
20:37
organization that I was with for over 20 years and not planned on
20:40
leaving. But there were things that, you
20:43
know, I started to wonder as I got more comfortable in my own
20:47
leadership style and, and in the leadership team that I started
20:53
to wonder, you know, I'm not sure that I feel valued here
20:56
every single day. And it was really just having
21:02
time and experience in there that I thought, I wonder how
21:05
it's done in different places. So to be honest, I happened to
21:08
have like probably a very challenging week.
21:11
And then I got that e-mail and I thought, where the Hell's
21:16
Fishersville, Virginia first? I've been in Virginia all my
21:20
life. I've never heard of it.
21:22
And, you know, it's two hours away.
21:25
And so I reached out, back out to the recruiter.
21:27
I said I would love to hear more about the hospital.
21:30
And so on a whim and really probably more for my confidence,
21:33
I thought, I'll drive up there and interview.
21:36
But I don't plan on leaving. I'm fully invested.
21:38
You know, I have my retirement. And when I came to Augusta, I
21:44
fell in love. Pretty.
21:47
Quickly like like on that first visit.
21:49
Yeah, I, I did. I, I hoped that I would have the
21:54
second interview that make it to the second interview process.
21:58
I interviewed, I tell my CEO all the time, Mary, I said I was
22:03
fully vetted. I interviewed with like 48
22:06
different people by the time all the interviews were done.
22:10
And I left here after the second round of interviews thinking,
22:17
wow, I really do hope I get that job.
22:20
My daughter was still a senior in high school, so again, I was
22:22
not, how's that going to work? And so Mary gave me the call.
22:28
But what was different for me and where I felt like I could
22:33
really do some good things here and feel supported as well is
22:38
when I interviewed with our board members, actually it was 3
22:42
or 4 of them that that interviewed me.
22:44
And they're, and I had interviewed with board members
22:47
before. And when these board members
22:52
interviewed me, they really talked about people.
22:56
So, and one question was, you know, patient experiences, you
22:59
know, what are you going to do about that?
23:02
And tell me about how you did what you did in your current
23:05
role. And so we talked about that,
23:08
which I happen to be very passionate about.
23:10
And then they said, you know, also we're hearing the community
23:13
that our nurses aren't having a great experience here.
23:15
Our turnover isn't great, but people don't enjoy working here
23:20
all the time. And, and then I saw the
23:23
employee, the nurses engagement survey and it was in the 21st
23:29
percentile. So 80% of other hospitals
23:31
surveyed, the nurses were having better experiences than they
23:33
were having here. And so we talked about that, you
23:36
know, things that I would do. And they didn't ask me about
23:40
about finance, you know, they didn't ask me about all the
23:45
regulations that we have to meet because they assume I'm in this
23:48
role. I've been doing it.
23:50
I know how to do those things. But they really wanted to make
23:52
sure that they were hiring someone that was focused on
23:54
people and just those questions alone.
23:57
I thought this is a different place.
23:59
It's a different feel from top down.
24:02
And then I interviewed with frontline staff and they told me
24:06
the same thing. They were very open and honest
24:09
as staff usually are when they're interviewing a potential
24:11
boss about all the things that they feel like needs to change.
24:14
And, and this was no different. And I, I said to them, you've
24:18
been really open about the opportunities here and, and
24:22
what's wrong, but why do you stay?
24:26
And cause many of them have been in here over 15 years.
24:29
And they all told me that it was because, you know, this isn't
24:33
just a job for them. This is their community.
24:36
So like one of them said, you know, my mom just had a calf
24:39
last week, but it was my friend taking care of her.
24:42
And you know, I see my patients in the grocery store.
24:45
And so it's really this community feel.
24:50
That's great. Tell me a little bit more about
24:52
Augusta itself. How many locations, How big is
24:55
this breadth of services that you provide?
24:57
Sure. I think our bed size are, so
24:59
we're 255 beds and that's the medium sized hospital, but
25:03
that's not very indicative of the size and the impact that we
25:08
have on the community. So we have one hospital, but we
25:11
are a health system. We have dozens of outpatient
25:17
clinics, physician offices. We have a very large home health
25:22
and Hospice program. We have a mobile clinic.
25:26
So we last year started or two years ago started taking
25:30
healthcare to the community and it really came out of COVID.
25:34
But that's a great program. We go to 19 different locations
25:38
with our mobile van and take healthcare to the people that
25:41
need it the most we have. Like where are you going?
25:45
Are these like homeless camps? Are these like churches?
25:49
Or like, yeah, OK, so we look at, you know, the patients that
25:53
are in our service area and where are those areas that need
25:58
us the most. So they may have transportation
26:00
issues, they may not have insurance.
26:02
And it's it's beneficial to us, you know, for them to get
26:06
healthcare early, but it's also beneficial to them.
26:09
And so we realized there's a lot of barriers to coming to the
26:12
hospital. Let's take it to them.
26:14
So it's churches it. Who funds that?
26:16
Community centers, it's homeless shelters.
26:20
Sorry, sorry for talking over you.
26:22
Who? Who funds all of that?
26:23
We do. That comes out of your pocket.
26:26
And so, but that's part of being a Community Hospital.
26:31
I was going to say, you guys are part of the community.
26:33
We're part of the community, we're nonprofits.
26:35
So we put much, we put 80% of what we make back into the
26:40
community or into the hospital. And, and so we have a farm here
26:46
as well. We have a working farm, we have
26:52
a fitness center on site. So we have a gym and we have
26:56
childcare. It's it's just a huge footprint
26:59
in the in the community. So you talked about one of the
27:02
first things that you tackled when you got there was the, you
27:06
know, whole human connection component.
27:08
Get those employee satisfaction scores, the patient satisfaction
27:11
scores up. Tell us about another project
27:15
that you've wrapped your arms around and you're proud of.
27:18
You know, a lot of it had to do with staffing in the beginning.
27:22
If you talk to any nurse, we, we always feel like we don't have
27:25
enough people and, and there's a nursing shortage.
27:27
So to, to a degree, that's that's also true as well.
27:32
And but when I got here, you know, one of the assessments
27:35
that you have to make as a nurse leader is, is it, we don't have
27:40
enough bodies per SE? Or is it the team's not working
27:44
together or is it, we're not scheduling, right.
27:46
And so there's a lot of questions and assessment that
27:49
you have to do when you're trying to figure out when people
27:52
are saying staffing, we're short staffed all the time.
27:54
And, and so as I dug into it, I realized, well, wow, we, we
28:02
don't have enough bodies here. We don't have enough nurses
28:05
here. And some of the ones that we
28:07
were hiring because we were so desperate, we're not the right
28:10
fit for our organization. You know, we want to hire a
28:13
particular type of nurse. And so I worked with not only
28:16
with my leadership team of saying, I want us to identify
28:19
the type of people that want to work here, that we want to work
28:23
here. So what does that fit look like?
28:25
And we stopped hiring what I say bodies in making sure that we
28:32
hired the people who want to be here for the right reasons.
28:34
And so that made a huge impact in our turnover.
28:38
Some of the other things that had to do with staffing was our
28:42
reputation in the community. So we have a lot of nursing
28:45
schools around us and they bring their students here to do
28:49
clinicals. But those students weren't
28:50
always having a great experience here.
28:53
They might have been mistreated by the nurses or the physicians.
28:56
Well, that's, that's where we're going to recruit from.
28:59
And so, you know, we had a lot of conversations.
29:02
I met with all the schools, all the nursing school leaders and
29:05
said, you know, I'm sorry for what's happened, but how do we
29:08
move forward? How can I, you know, make these
29:10
relationships stronger and support the students and what
29:13
they're doing? And so we did a lot of work
29:15
about making sure that students felt good when they worked here.
29:18
And that also helped us recruit tremendously because they felt
29:22
like they were part of the team, even as just being a student.
29:25
So they would apply afterwards. We also started our branding
29:30
campaign, a nurse branding campaign and that really talked
29:35
about if you want to be a nurse here, we, we have a LND unit.
29:41
We take care of you from birth all the way through your life
29:44
cycle of any kind of nursing that you'd want to do until your
29:49
death. Because we have a Hospice unit
29:51
and not every hospital can follow a patient's journey all
29:55
the way through their life. And so we talked more about what
29:58
it's like working here and the opportunities here.
30:00
So we just built a brand for nursing.
30:03
And, and so our turnover where our recruitment numbers went up
30:07
and, and they continue to go up every year.
30:10
And our turnover during COVID was, was about 32% and now we're
30:19
down to 14%. And and so that's just their
30:23
hard work. Once you find somebody that fits
30:28
the mold, they're there for the right reasons.
30:31
How do you hold on to them? How do you keep them there?
30:33
You know, it's just as important, and I learned very
30:37
early here because I put a lot of attention on we need to
30:39
recruit, we need to recruit, we need to recruit because we just
30:42
didn't have the sheer numbers to take care of patients.
30:46
But during focusing on recruit, I had a nurse.
30:49
I'd been here, I think 25 years and I did a lot of town halls to
30:53
explain what what are we doing to get the word out.
30:56
And a nurse that had like 25 years of experience came up to
30:59
me afterwards and she said, you know, it's great that you're
31:02
recruiting and we're building our numbers, but what are you
31:06
doing for the people that have been here?
31:09
And I thought, yeah, that's a really good question.
31:12
And I was so focused on recruiting, but I'm not going to
31:17
keep those people that I'm recruiting if I don't figure out
31:19
the retaining part. And so that's when we started
31:21
really talking about, again, making those human connections
31:26
with leaders, making sure our leaders had the right training.
31:29
You know, how do you know how to be a leader?
31:31
What skills do you need? It's not just because you are a
31:33
great nurse at the bedside. You need to make sure they have
31:36
the skills and the tools to do their job.
31:39
We talked about benefits and we talked about what sort of, if we
31:45
were giving a sign on bonus, for example, to a new nurse, let's
31:48
say we gave them $5000 sign on bonus, then what were we giving
31:52
with for our team? And so we, if a nurse referred
31:56
another nurse here, then we would give that nurse $5000 to
32:01
as a incentive, you know, and so we did a lot of these little
32:05
things. There's a ton of tactics that we
32:07
that we did, but it was really focused on meeting the needs of
32:12
the people that we have. And one of the other areas is,
32:15
and it's very challenging, I think in all areas is all the
32:18
generations working together. And So what worked for a baby
32:23
boomer is not going to work for a millennial or a Gen.
32:27
Z. And so we really had to open our
32:29
eyes to, it's not a one-size-fits-all.
32:33
It's really the things that Gen. Z and millennials have have
32:38
wanted is career paths and growth and development.
32:41
And what does that look like? And that's very different than
32:44
some of the other generations of nursing.
32:46
And so we also made sure that we were, we didn't have this menu
32:50
of one-size-fits-all, that there was really truly things that we
32:53
could do. Crystal, during the middle of
32:57
COVID, you decided to get your Pathway to Excellence
33:03
designation. What is that and why did you
33:06
pursue it? Pathways to Excellence is
33:10
similar to a magnet. It's the same company and it
33:14
really lifts up the power of nursing and the voice of
33:19
nursing. And Pathways to Excellence is
33:23
really focused on the practice environment of every nurse, no
33:29
matter where they work in the in, in the hospital or in a
33:31
physician's office. And they want to know that we
33:35
have the support systems and a positive environment for them to
33:39
work in. And it takes a little while to
33:42
build to build that. And there's certain areas that
33:45
you have to, in order to build this positive practice
33:48
environment that you really need to execute on these particular
33:50
things. And so I decided during COVID,
33:53
even though we were already stretched then, you know, I
33:56
think this is what we're going to need to start moving out of
34:00
crisis mode into this is normal life.
34:03
And it was a way to distract from what we were doing.
34:08
But it was an entire team decision because it does take a
34:11
lot of time and it is going to take away from some of the
34:15
things that they have to do. And so I set the nursing team
34:18
down and also the other hospital leaders down and said, here's
34:21
what it's going to take. Here's the time that it's going
34:24
to take for everybody. Can everybody get behind this?
34:27
I know we have a lot to do. And every single leader in the
34:30
organization had a vote on my nursing leaders had a vote and
34:33
they all said, yes, we want to do this.
34:37
So it took us two years to really meet all the requirements
34:42
to to beat pathways. Once you meet the requirements
34:45
and you've documented those, you send it to the ANCC and they
34:51
accept your document. So you have to have examples of
34:53
every single thing, all the requirements and a real example
34:59
about how how we met this thing. It also had to be written by
35:03
frontline nurses. So it was not leaders that were
35:05
writing these things. It was frontline nurses giving
35:07
examples of how we've met this after they accept our documents,
35:11
then they do a survey of every single nurse and, and, and it's
35:16
sort of validation. So we got your documents, but
35:19
are you really doing this? And so they anonymously survey
35:23
all the nurses, and we have to get a certain percentage in
35:26
order to be designated as a pathway to excellence.
35:30
And it was just what we needed to start coming out of COVID,
35:33
focusing on the things that created that positive practice
35:37
environment, like rounding, like leadership development, career
35:40
pathways, you know, all the different ways they can grow,
35:43
certification, pay, Those are the things that nurses care
35:49
about. And we had a laser focus on
35:53
those. And it was the best thing we
35:55
could have done. Crystal say more about that
35:59
experience of coming out of COVID.
36:02
COVID was hard on everybody, but probably no harder than, you
36:06
know, it was in your environment.
36:08
What what was the the vibe there like in in how how helpful was
36:14
this pathway to Excellence program?
36:17
Before it stopped me. If I'm rambling, you know, in
36:20
the middle of COVID where things were changing literally every 15
36:23
minutes. Do you wear a mask?
36:24
Do you not wear a mask? Do you, you know, wear full
36:29
protective head equipment? You know, do you have to have a
36:33
respirator if there? I mean, there were just all
36:35
sorts of questions coming out. And this was even before the
36:38
vaccine. And a lot of healthcare people
36:41
thought, you know, this is probably just a bad version of
36:45
the flu. And we were all used to going
36:47
through flu season. So we really thought this would
36:49
probably be over in a month or two, and it wasn't.
36:53
And it got worse and patients died.
36:55
And it was really hard to be a nurse at that time.
36:59
Things were changing. You didn't have all the
37:01
information, you know, social media didn't help either.
37:04
And all these opposing views about things.
37:07
And in front of them, they were seeing patients die like they've
37:10
never seen before. And we had to set up special
37:13
units, they had to wear extra equipment and it was just really
37:18
difficult. And so when you go through
37:20
something like that for an extended period of time, you
37:23
really start going through burnout.
37:26
And I call it caregiver fatigue, where you're so busy taking care
37:33
of everybody else that you've become immune to your own needs
37:37
and sometimes not sensitive to others needs because you're
37:40
you're in this environment all the time.
37:42
And so it created a lot of burnout.
37:45
And so I felt like we needed to start really focusing on how we
37:49
were going to prevent burnout, which also would have helped us
37:52
with turnover. And so for me personally, you
37:55
know, I go back to the things that worked for me and, and when
37:59
a big change needed to happen. And again, I needed to go back
38:02
to being vulnerable with my team.
38:04
And because I also felt burned out, I also felt like, you know,
38:08
I'm not sure if I'm the right leader to see them through this.
38:13
You know, I was having again, you know, questioning my own
38:17
abilities to lead through this because I've never been through
38:19
this before and I didn't have all the answers.
38:22
And, you know, sometimes all I could do was sit and listen, but
38:27
I didn't have solutions for things.
38:28
And that, so that really bothered me again at the same
38:31
time, having being burned out myself.
38:34
And so I started thinking, I, I think that I cannot be effective
38:38
here anymore. And this is my own wording.
38:40
You know, no one told me that. You know, my boss, never, She's
38:44
always supported me. But I started feeling like I
38:46
don't, I don't know if I'm giving them the right things.
38:49
And I started questioning, you know, maybe I should leave so
38:54
someone else can do, Maybe someone else can do a better job
38:58
of just helping with those burnout.
39:00
And I had a nursing director come to me right at the moment
39:06
where I really needed to make a decision whether I was going to
39:08
stay or go. And, and she didn't know that I
39:11
was internally dealing with this.
39:13
And she put a letter on my desk and it said, you know, I know
39:19
that you focus on us and the front lines so much.
39:23
But you know, I want you to know that I see you and I still get
39:29
to be emotional that I see you and that I appreciate the things
39:34
that you've done and the time that you've spent with us, even
39:38
if it's, even if you don't have the answer, the time spent in
39:42
just talking through this has made me a better leader.
39:46
And I just and thank you. And so after seeing that, that
39:52
was sort of that I needed to hear that, you know, even
39:55
leaders need, you know, that positive reinforcement every
40:00
once in a while and not everything just because things
40:04
aren't great. I mean no one could control
40:07
COVID. It doesn't mean that we're not
40:12
doing well as a team, that we're not close.
40:15
And so I, I just disclosed to my team, listen, I'm feeling burned
40:19
out too. But this is not the way where
40:21
we're going to stay. And I had to be really open and
40:24
honest with them and. You chose to be open and honest
40:27
with your team after you had received this.
40:28
Letter that, you know, I was also feeling burned out and
40:32
questioned my ability to lead them and to get them out of
40:36
burnout. And, you know, they were afraid
40:39
to express some of the things that they were feeling because I
40:43
had tried to stay, you know, very professional and
40:46
everything's going to be OK and we're going to get through this.
40:49
And and that's called crisis leadership.
40:52
You know, you can't fall apart. And I realized that they need to
40:57
see the human side of me where I was struggling just as much as
41:00
they were. And the only way that we could
41:02
get out of it is if we supported each other.
41:05
And the leaders really came together and we started holding
41:09
each other accountable for not working late nights, not sending
41:13
emails late at night and taking your vacation and just doing
41:18
things to have a better work life balance.
41:20
But just opening up that conversation to my leaders to
41:23
say, I understand where you are because I'm there too, but how
41:26
do we get out of it? I think it it really impacted
41:31
quite a bit of leaders. It, I mean, it sounds like you
41:35
struck a really critical balance at just the right time there,
41:37
right? You, you can't show up to work,
41:39
you know, sobbing every day 'cause like you said, crisis
41:42
mode, like, you know, you got to show up and get stuff done.
41:47
But it's yet at some point being too professional, too rock
41:52
solid, you know, is making everybody else alongside of you
41:56
feel like what's wrong with me? Because I don't have that same
42:01
confidence that Crystal is exuding.
42:03
And so then when you can kind of pull the, the curtain back and
42:06
say, listen, here's what's really going on inside of me,
42:09
they're like, oh, thank goodness, me too.
42:12
Let's come together, give each other a hug and, you know, how
42:14
can we make this better and, and, and move on.
42:17
Yeah. Yeah, that's and that's exactly
42:19
how it happened. And, you know, some people could
42:21
move on and we mostly moved on as a group or nurse leader
42:24
engagement improved by over I by memory over 40%.
42:30
You know, we were really low and, and they took their just a
42:35
nurse leader engagement survey. And when I saw it was so low,
42:39
that's I'm like, yeah, I'm feeling the way they are.
42:42
And how do we get to it together?
42:43
And so we use that as our starting point.
42:46
And then we just did another survey last year and it's more
42:49
than doubled. You know what it was when we
42:52
took that during COVID. And so I know that we're doing
42:57
good stuff. Yeah, Crystal, I want to hear
43:00
you talk a little bit about blame culture that used to exist
43:05
in the hospital system. What does that mean?
43:08
Why is it no longer the problem it was?
43:12
Yeah, I think, yeah. It's one of the reasons why I,
43:17
you know, when I was called on to be a leader, it's one of the
43:19
reasons why I said yes. And you know, when things happen
43:24
to patients or to other people, so I'll just use a fall.
43:28
For example, the patient falls in the hospital the way it used
43:32
to be when I was at the bedside is the first question that you
43:36
would get from a leader is why'd you let your patient fall?
43:39
And so immediately, one, you're on the defense.
43:43
And two, you feel like you're a terrible nurse.
43:46
And those things that happened to me and I, I didn't let my
43:49
patient fall, but I also can't be there 24/7.
43:54
And so you put all these things in place to try to prevent it.
43:56
But sometimes it's still, it's not 100% foolproof that it's not
44:00
going to happen. And, and at the time that, you
44:05
know, I was blamed, I felt like blamed.
44:08
I thought, again, this is early in my career.
44:11
I'd only been a nurse for about 5 or 6 years.
44:13
I thought, OK, well, they must not think I'm a good nurse if I
44:19
let my patient fall and maybe I should be away from the bedside
44:24
and, and just really blame myself for a long time.
44:27
And then I decided to go back to school to try to understand how
44:31
maybe I don't understand how things work and, and how can I
44:35
not let those things happen to my patients.
44:37
So I decided to go back to school thinking I would have the
44:40
answers to those questions. I want to be a better nurse.
44:42
I want to, I, I don't want bad things to happen to my patients.
44:46
And you know, what I learned out of school was, you know, it's
44:49
all about how the organization or how this particular leader
44:54
looks at errors, you know, medical errors, medication
44:59
errors, things that happen. And the old school way was blame
45:04
and shame and make you feel bad. And the way it should be is OK
45:10
Crystal, your patient felt. Let's go back to this timeline
45:14
about what happened and are there things that we could learn
45:18
from this? So for example, in my situation,
45:21
the patient had what was called a bed alarm on.
45:24
So it should alarm when the patient comes out of the bed.
45:27
It didn't go off. So when we looked back and sort
45:31
of did a root cause analysis of, well, why didn't they go off, it
45:34
didn't give me enough warning. Well, it's because there was a
45:38
weight limit on it and my patient only weighed 90 lbs.
45:41
In order for it to feel pressure, the patient needed to
45:44
weigh 120 lbs. And so that's what we should be
45:49
looking at. We should go back and say let's
45:51
go through the situation. Let's look at our policies or,
45:55
or what we're doing in our policy, the thing that we're
45:57
really doing. Let's go looking through the
45:59
equipment. Let's figure out how this how we
46:03
can prevent this from happening again.
46:04
And that's proactive. That's a culture of safety, and
46:08
that's a no blame. Much more constructive.
46:12
Yeah, it, it is. And, and we've prevented other
46:15
things from happening because nurses feel comfortable coming
46:18
forward of and reporting, hey, this happened until we dig into
46:23
the situation. It's not, it's less than 1% of
46:26
the time that it's actually a person issue.
46:28
Most of the time it's a organizational or policy issue
46:32
that we just haven't dug into to find out why these things are
46:35
happening. What was the catalyst over the
46:38
years to sort of spark this change?
46:44
You know, the catalyst for me really thinking about how, you
46:49
know, errors at the bedside, again, just use that when
46:53
there's things that happen in healthcare, no matter if it's a
46:55
bedside or not, and how those people are treated.
47:00
But as a leader, I wanted to understand that more because it
47:03
does have a huge impact on somebody staying in healthcare
47:07
or leaving healthcare and how they see themselves in, in
47:10
making these errors. You know, over the years,
47:16
there's been so many examples of when we talked about something
47:19
or something was reported and we fixed it and no more errors
47:24
happened. And it, it was really about
47:26
nurses having a voice and into the work that they do and they
47:30
know how to fix things because they're at the bedside.
47:33
Just listen to them. They're at the bedside.
47:35
They know how these things work, they know how it doesn't work
47:38
and just listen. I understand you've got two
47:45
daughters either in or entering the healthcare field.
47:50
How do you feel about that? I am so incredibly proud of my
47:55
daughters, my oldest, and they'll probably both kill me
48:00
for talking about them, but I talk about them a lot.
48:03
They've influenced my career a lot as well.
48:06
So my oldest is 26 and she's a nurse, and she's currently in an
48:13
ICU unit, and she's been a nurse for about four years.
48:17
So she went to nursing school during COVID.
48:20
And, you know, listening to her experiences during COVID really
48:24
opened up my eyes to the experiences that my nurses might
48:28
be having here. So when she would tell me about
48:31
things during COVID and how she was training, also understood
48:35
when people graduated during COVID, they didn't get the same
48:37
training that I did because it was very limited about what they
48:40
could do during COVID. So she helped me open my eyes
48:43
about some of the challenges that new grads might be having.
48:46
But I would come back to my hospital and say, I just heard
48:50
this from my daughter who works in a totally darter system.
48:53
Does that Is that happening here?
48:56
Could that happen here? And so again, it helped with
48:59
those conversations and really being in tuned with the front
49:03
lines. And so she's even after she
49:06
became a new grad, finished nursing school, became a new
49:08
grad. And one of the first times that
49:11
she called me and I just knew. And she called me crying and I
49:16
thought, oh, she probably just had her first patient pass away.
49:19
And that's not what it was because we all feel a certain
49:23
way, especially when you're first patient and well, with
49:27
every patient, but in particular your first one.
49:29
And I said, what's wrong? And, and she said I just had a
49:34
patient really talk poorly about me.
49:38
And I heard I overheard him talking to the other nurse.
49:42
And I worked with him all night long while I was in his room all
49:44
night. And just the lack of
49:47
appreciation, the incivility to call her names and to talk about
49:51
her body style, her body type just broke her spirit as a new
49:57
grad. And so I came back to my
50:00
leadership team and to my frontline nurses, and I said, is
50:04
that incivility happening here? And yes, it was.
50:09
And so it, again, it opened up a whole new world to talk about
50:13
violence in work, in the workplace, the incivility that's
50:16
happening. And what tools and resources do
50:18
we have to make them resilient, you know, to deal with these
50:22
sort of things? And so my daughter has certainly
50:25
taught me a lot, and I'm not going to let her know yet.
50:29
And then my my youngest, she is graduating from Saint Louis
50:34
University with her MHA. She got her MBA last year.
50:38
And her dream has always been to be into healthcare, leadership
50:43
and population. She's had a good.
50:45
Role model, yeah, HealthEquity and population health and, and
50:49
to be in leadership. And she's done so many things
50:54
the right way to get there. So now actually this month
50:57
she'll be graduating in two weeks, she'll be looking for a
50:59
job in healthcare administration.
51:01
And, you know, I worry for her because just the state of things
51:05
in, in healthcare in general right now, I feels like it's on
51:08
the shaky ground with, you know, all the policy changes and, and
51:15
payment changes that are having, how we get reimbursed for the
51:18
care that we provide. It feels really unstable right
51:22
now. And so I worry about her career
51:24
and the things that she'll have to deal with that at least we're
51:27
a little bit more stable for me. Yeah.
51:33
You know, Crystal, the next question I want to tackle, I
51:36
wonder if we've already hit the topics.
51:38
You know, I always like to ask my guests about a serious
51:41
challenge that they've overcome and how they got through it and
51:44
what they learned. You've already touched on some.
51:48
We have a another one that you'd like to explore.
51:50
Maybe go a little bit deeper on one we've already mentioned.
51:54
Yeah, there's, yeah, one of the, I'm going to answer that in a
51:59
roundabout way, hopefully not rambling way at Augusta Health.
52:04
You know, one of the things that we do is a new leader
52:06
orientation and our director of organizational development about
52:11
two years ago asked, Hey, we'd really like to understand your
52:15
career path and we'd like to have some of the leaders come
52:19
and talk to the new leaders about how they got where they
52:22
where they are. But what were those defining
52:25
moments in your career that made you think twice or something
52:31
changed and the highs and the lows.
52:33
So it's, it's on, you know, ideally you'd put a timeline
52:37
together and your career progression is like this.
52:40
And when you look at mine, it's up here.
52:42
I had some highs, I had some lows, and it's just sort of like
52:45
that because that's life. And so I probably have quite a
52:49
few. You know, my mom, you know,
52:52
being in the burn unit, that was probably one of my lowest
52:58
points, but it became the highest because that's really
53:02
what motivated me to do better for our patients.
53:06
And, you know, having children was a high point, but I also
53:11
realized, you know, soon after having children that I needed, I
53:18
couldn't be a nurse 24/7. I'm always a nurse.
53:21
But I also needed to make sure that I had enough reserves,
53:24
emotional reserves when I got home to take care of them and,
53:28
and to be emotionally and compassionate for them.
53:32
And it's easy sometimes to give that all to your patients and
53:35
not bring it home to your family.
53:37
And so I had to make a career choice then of I probably should
53:40
go somewhere else that doesn't drain me so much emotionally.
53:43
At the time, I was working in Hospice care.
53:45
And so there's been lots over the years.
53:49
I think COVID, that was probably the biggest that I've had next
53:56
to the situation with my mom. What have you found as a source
54:05
of strength or someone or something you can lean on during
54:09
the really hard times? And just by the nature of who I
54:12
am, I, I go internal and it's not a great coping mechanism.
54:22
And you learn the older you get that you can't do it by
54:25
yourself. So my husband has been fantastic
54:31
and knowing when there's times where I'm really inside and, and
54:37
so he's really patient and, and waits for me to, to start
54:40
talking about that. But I've really had great
54:43
support systems and and that's really, it sounds so cliche, but
54:47
it's really been those support systems and, and letting me
54:52
figure it out in my time and then reaching out when I need
54:56
that help. My support systems have always
54:58
been there. Do you, are you, you part of any
55:03
peer support groups? Some people call them
55:05
masterminds or or networks of, you know, folks who are in
55:09
similar positions within other hospitals that you can kind of
55:13
talk with and support each other.
55:14
Yeah, that's been, you know, a big part.
55:17
And that would be advice that I would give anyone at any point
55:21
in their career is build your network, build your network.
55:25
And you've got to have people that have similar roles to you
55:31
sometimes just as a sanity check.
55:33
And to say, are you dealing with this or how have you dealt with
55:36
this in the past or is this weird?
55:39
But I have a number of chief nursing officers that I've been
55:42
very good friends with. A couple of them have been my
55:45
mentors. I've built a really great
55:48
network that I can call any of them and we can call each other.
55:52
And during COVID, we were always on the phone with each other,
55:56
but also reaching outside of nursing has been very helpful.
55:59
So, you know, I have mentors that were CF OS and Co OS and
56:05
understanding that world. But I also think that the team
56:09
that I work with and on my in my hospital right now, the
56:12
administrative team, it, it will make you or break you.
56:18
And, and so we have such a great team that they, we really
56:21
support each other in the good times and the bad times.
56:26
And, and some people are so intuitive without you saying a
56:30
word, they know something's happening.
56:32
It just happened today. One of my colleagues came up to
56:35
me and said, are you feeling OK? I'm like, oh, yes, I'm fine.
56:37
I'm just tired. And she said, I wanted to check
56:40
on you just to make sure because I was reading something
56:43
different. And I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm
56:44
just distracted. And I was fine.
56:47
And surrounding yourself with people like that.
56:49
But I do have professional networks.
56:51
You know, I have nursing leadership networks.
56:54
I'm a part of the American Academy for Healthcare
56:56
Executives. I've built some great
56:57
friendships there. But network network.
57:03
What advice would you have for somebody who's in a position of
57:06
leadership? Maybe it's, you know, within
57:07
healthcare. Maybe it's not.
57:08
And they're like, yeah, like, I could really use that.
57:11
How do I even get started? Like, how do I build my network?
57:14
How do I find that support? Group.
57:16
Now, I was lucky enough when I worked for my last company, it
57:18
was a very large company and and so you could just pick up the
57:23
phone and call another hospital that was in the same company.
57:27
And coming to Augusta, we're independent, so we're not part
57:29
of a system. So I really had to practice on
57:33
looking for those things. I think joining a nursing
57:36
leadership organization is probably the first thing that
57:38
you need to do. But then one of the wonderful
57:40
parts about being part of the Mayo Network is that now we have
57:45
the resources and I can call Mayo and say, hey, who's who's
57:49
doing this right now? Which hospital, which CNO, which
57:53
COO are you that I can talk to you about this.
57:56
So that's been the fantastic thing about joining the clinical
58:00
network there because we have resources.
58:03
I think the professional organizations are always where
58:05
to start conferences, really taking advantage of going to
58:10
your professional conferences. That's where all the one to one
58:13
connections happen and and if you're in the same session,
58:16
obviously you have the same kind of interest right there.
58:18
So just start talking there. What does it mean to be part of
58:22
the Mayo network? What does that get you access
58:25
to? It gives us access to all of the
58:29
other organizations that are in Mayo.
58:31
So you know, Mayo has their their flagship hospitals, but
58:35
they've opened it up to other independent hospitals joining so
58:38
that we can have a clinically integrated network.
58:40
And So what for us, how that's really helped us is, you know,
58:44
maybe there's a specialty that we don't have here.
58:47
And so we want to call someone that's in the network to say,
58:49
what do you think about this? Or sometimes our patients want a
58:52
second opinion or Mayo is also known for their fantastic
58:56
research and education that they provide.
58:59
So all of our physicians have webinars and all sorts of
59:04
education available right at their fingertips.
59:06
They don't even have to go looking for it because Mayo has
59:09
already done that. They have a lot of best
59:11
practices that we can just tap into for nursing.
59:15
We've used their nursing network for best practice and there's AC
59:19
and O group as part of Mayo, and Mayo hosts a couple get
59:26
togethers every year for the C&O's just to talk about what
59:28
are we dealing with. And so there's lots of
59:31
education, lots of opportunities for clinicians to talk and work
59:35
on projects together. It's just been a fantastic
59:38
experience. I want to talk a little bit more
59:41
about community. You mentioned a lot about how
59:46
guys are part of the community. You have these, you know, these
59:50
health vans that go out and you know, to churches, homeless
59:53
camp, different places to provide free healthcare for
59:56
people. You know, the people who work
59:59
there, they interact with their patients, they see them at the
1:00:02
grocery store, at church, etcetera.
1:00:04
What is like more formal kind of community outreach?
1:00:09
Look like aside from what you've already mentioned with those the
1:00:12
the traveling health vans. So we have a whole network for
1:00:17
community. We we have a, a community
1:00:21
partnership that we've put together.
1:00:25
So in partnership with large employers, other community
1:00:29
minded businesses and organizations, and we bring that
1:00:34
entire group together and we start talking about what would
1:00:37
be most impactful for our community.
1:00:39
So is it, you know, investing in this or a grant for this project
1:00:44
for the YMCA or something for the homeless shelter?
1:00:48
And so that I feel like we're the the gatherers of people and,
1:00:56
and we're all here for the same reason, but many times we're the
1:00:58
facilitator of all those community groups working
1:01:01
together. So not only are is the
1:01:03
organization itself doing things in the community like I've
1:01:06
already talked about, but we're bringing the other community
1:01:10
partners together as well to do those things.
1:01:13
And one of the there's, there's so many different things that we
1:01:16
impact, like I mentioned, our farm, you know, we have our own
1:01:20
farm, we grow produce there and we deliver that produce not only
1:01:26
to our patients who have food insecurities.
1:01:29
Once we've identified them, we make sure that they get those
1:01:32
vegetables. We also use it for our diabetic
1:01:34
education and we teach them how to cook healthy.
1:01:37
And, you know, that's, that's just an, an offering to the
1:01:41
community, but we also deliver food to the food pantries in the
1:01:46
area. So someone doesn't have to be a
1:01:47
patient of ours to be impacted by the work that we do in the
1:01:51
community. And so the food pantries, you
1:01:53
know, rely on that produce as well.
1:01:56
And that's just one example of things that we do that, you
1:01:59
know, it's for the health of the community and for the benefit of
1:02:02
the community. It's not because we're making a
1:02:04
dollar off of it. I like that.
1:02:08
Crystal, I've just got one more question for you, But before I
1:02:11
ask it, I want to do 2 things. First thing, I'm going to invite
1:02:13
all of our listeners to go ahead and hit the follow button on
1:02:16
their favorite podcast app. You want to continue to get more
1:02:18
great interviews like we've had today with Crystal Farmer at
1:02:22
Augusta Health. Crystal, I also want to let
1:02:24
people to know the best way to get in touch with you or to
1:02:27
follow your story. What would that be?
1:02:29
Probably the best way would be on LinkedIn.
1:02:31
It's just crystal Farmer COO at Augusta Health and search for me
1:02:36
and feel free to send me a message.
1:02:39
I've done a couple presentations before and that's the best way
1:02:41
for people to just send me an e-mail and I'm happy to connect.
1:02:46
I'd love to connect. The best part of my job is when
1:02:48
I get to do things like that. Well, and I understand that you
1:02:52
actually made a, a LinkedIn post earlier this month.
1:02:55
This is a, or actually it was last month, April 2025 that you
1:02:59
were particularly enthused about.
1:03:01
You want to give voice to that? Yeah, so I just happened to love
1:03:05
April Fools. I have no idea why, but I just
1:03:08
always do. And now that my kids are grown,
1:03:10
I can't do jokes on them anymore because now they know all my
1:03:13
tricks. And so April Fools was coming
1:03:16
up. We had a leadership meeting
1:03:18
coming up, and I loved to infuse fun and joy into our leadership
1:03:23
meetings. You know, everybody hates a
1:03:26
staff meeting because you sit there and and listen and even
1:03:30
the most interesting ones, if you're not infusing fun and
1:03:33
connection, if you don't laugh in some sort of leadership
1:03:36
meeting, really you just leave. Feel like now I got a whole lot
1:03:40
more work to do. It's about building that
1:03:41
connection. And and so I had a partner in
1:03:44
crime, our nutrition director, and between him and I, it took 5
1:03:49
minutes. We used ChatGPT.
1:03:50
We made-up a new menu for our cafeteria and, and told our key
1:03:55
leaders that, you know, we needed to support healthy eating
1:03:59
and that we were going to go 100% vegetarian in our
1:04:02
cafeteria. And our cafeteria is known like
1:04:06
people come in from the outside when they're not a patient just
1:04:08
to eat at our cafeteria. So we have very good food, but
1:04:14
going 100% vegetarian would definitely be a we have cows
1:04:17
across the street, you know, we grow beef here.
1:04:20
And so it was a good trick and people are still talking about
1:04:25
it. And that's the kind of
1:04:26
connections like the the shared stories that you have with your
1:04:29
team, the shared jokes, the inside jokes.
1:04:32
Those are great for building a team connection and purpose.
1:04:37
But it's all about bringing joy back to work.
1:04:41
Well, we'll find a link to that post as well as a link to your
1:04:44
own profile and make sure we include that in the show notes.
1:04:48
Crystal Farmer, I want to be the first one to thank you for
1:04:50
sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:04:53
I really appreciate. It thank you for the
1:04:55
opportunity. I really appreciate it.
1:04:57
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
1:05:00
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:05:02
today.