Latest / Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast / Dr. Ralph Yates, Chief Medical Officer at Salem Health

Transcript

Dr. Ralph Yates, Chief Medical Officer at Salem Health · Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast

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