The Task: Write a reflection. The goal: Mindfulness.

Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety – Day 1, June 8, 2015

Sentences that stuck:

  • “People don’t remember powerpoints, they remember stories.”
  • “I need a little clarity.”
  • “Telluride has more dogs per person (1.8/person) than any other town in the U.S.”
  • “The most important question: ‘What’s the worst it could be?'”
  • “Why do we have a Monday-through-Friday culture when illness happens every day of the week?”
  • “The best way to starve a dog is to tell two people to feed it.”
  • “Make a plan to persuade; People are motivated by data, structure, and emotions.”
  • “Why are you here? What do you want to take with you? What are you willing to invest?”

After only one day of the “Telluride Experience”, I’ve got 6 pages of handwritten notes and an unending stream of questions and ideas buzzing around my head. Today Dr. Wendy Madigosky asked us to list situations in which we could have done something more to improve patient safety. Even with only one year of medical school under my belt and extremely limited clinical experience, I was able to list 5 separate instances in under two minutes. What kind of impact did my hesitation create? What ripple effects will I set in motion in the years to come? What consequences will I manage to avoid using the tools I collect during this week?

(In keeping with my list-making tendencies…)

Personal goals for the coming week:

  • Get Atul Gawande to tweet us back.
  • Learn as much as possible from my peers. I’ve found that if I simply present one question, I will be gifted with many answers and valuable insight gained from experience. (ex: “How does your facility tackle this problem?”)
  • Make connections with the awesome group of faculty here. Like to the point where we actually keep up with an ongoing email conversation long after the week ends.
  • Make a real plan for changing the inter-professional curriculum and patient safety attitudes back at Mizzou. (More on this in a future post)
  • Build a personal motivation/reflection schedule for my life in general. I want to sit down and write down a list of the things I want to accomplish in the next year… big and small. Every couple of months or so, I will revisit the list, evaluate my progress, and renew this energy and motivation that is so infectious here in Telluride.
  • Eat all of the food, hike it off, and do it all over again.

Audra