Building A Culture of Ownership in Healthcare.... The Invisible Architecture of Core Values, Attitude and Self Empowerment, Joe Tye and Bob Dent, Indianapolis: Sigma Theta Tau International Publishing; 2017. Soft Cover, 269 pages, $44.85.
The movie Apollo 13 (1995) came to mind as I read this book. Apollo 13 is about the spacecraft Odyssey, whose 1970 mission was to land on the moon. That adventure was aborted because of a significant technical problem, resulting in a new mission to bring the ship and astronauts home in equipment meant to help them land on the moon. NASA faced a problem that required leadership, innovation, and input from the full team, including those who were in space. The most famous lines from the movie are "Houston, we have a problem" and "Failure is not an option." A less famous quote touches on the theme of this book. One of the engineers sitting in a room full of engineers looked up at the leader and said, "Gene, the Odyssey is dying. From my chair here, this is the last option."
Years ago, I was impressed with that exchange between the leader and the engineer because the engineer owned his expertise and the culture empowered him to speak up. For me, this book captures the essence of ownership and applies it to a health care organization. The authors are spot on when they use culture and ownership in the title. Both are critical to meeting increasing demands and changes in our health care system.
The authors filled this compact 5 x 8-in book with great content, while organizing it to be reader-friendly. Even the table of contents has detailed points critical to the subject, helping the reader go to the right place for more information. Each clearly written chapter includes a summary, challenging but practical chapter questions, and references. Tye and Dent use language that stimulates discussion. Some of the content that stands out for me includes the following:
* Accountability vs Ownership;
* Importance of Culture and Leadership;
* Ten Reasons why Culture does eat Strat-egy for Lunch,
* Essential Characteristics of a Culture of Ownership:
[black small square] Commitment,
[black small square] Engagement,
[black small square] Passion,
[black small square] Initiative,
[black small square] Stewardship,
[black small square] Belonging,
[black small square] Fellowship, and
[black small square] Pride;
* The Pickle Challenge for Charity;
* The Florence Nightingale Challenge;
* Brick Walls and Program of the Month Syndrome; and
* Lessons from the Values and Culture Initiative at Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland, Texas.
We pull nurses into many meetings. This book will make the meetings more meaningful. The authors include core knowledge from many disciplines, such as Employee Engagement, Quality, Wellness, and Leadership. Nurses enrolled in formal education programs will be able to use this book in their leadership courses.
As this book explains, in a culture of ownership, people are emotionally positive, self-empowered, and fully engaged. When this is combined with a common language around initiatives such as patient safety, you can work with a team, like NASA in 1970, that not only cares for its "spaceship" but also brings it home when calamity strikes. Developing a Culture of Ownership will serve both patients and staff well.
This book can get you there.
When I Die I'm Going to HEAVEN 'Cause I've Spent my Time in Hell ... A Memoir of My Year as an Army Nurse in Vietnam, Barbara Hesselman Kautz. 2nd edition. Portsmith, NH: Piscataqua Press; 2013. Soft Cover, 197 pages. On Amazon $15.99, Kindle $6.99.
This book is the story of the author's year in Vietnam at the 24th Evacuation Hospital. As a fairly new graduate, she was assigned to the neurosurgical intensive care unit. If you enjoyed the Ken Burns series on Vietnam, you will want to read this book. It will take you to the bedside of young soldiers badly wounded in ways you can only imagine, requiring expert treatment under challenging conditions. There are also stories about caring for the people of Vietnam, such as a civilian patient gored by a buffalo, who had only his 10-year-old son at his bedside. Both could only speak their particular dialect, which could not be understood by US nurses.
Most of us enjoyed the heroics of the television program MASH, which depicted a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean war. The show shared lots of humorous moments, while touching on the seriousness of war and the intricate relationships of staff and soldiers. In a similar way, Hesselman Kautz incorporates the many relationships she and other army nurses had with their patients, peers, managers, corpsmen, and other military members such as helicopter pilots. She tells of friendships that continue today and how she met her husband (the romantic part of a good war story). This book has a special meaning to me because the author was a classmate of mine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing. However, even if you have never been a military nurse, you will be drawn to this true story of Nursing service. Barbara is still the same person today that she describes in her book. Time has changed her perspective, as it may for all of us going through challenging times. At the end of the book (p. 196), she shares: "My attitude about what I lived through in Vietnam has changed. I sometimes wish I could go back and tell my twenty-three-year-old self to be more positive, to consider being in Vietnam an adventure rather than a burden. Perhaps, after all, what I did in 1970 really was noble."
-Elizabeth (Betty) Falter, MS, BSN, RN, NEA-BC