Monthly Archives: December 2018

2018 Countdown – top 10 blog posts

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It’s the time of year for top 10 lists and countdowns so I’m adding mine to the mix. These are my most read blog posts from 2018. If you missed any of them first time around now is your chance to check them Top10out.

I cover a range of topics and it looks like readers appreciate the variety. Here are the top 10 as measured by total views with a countdown from number 10:

#10 – Find your voice, a mentor and be bold – Career advice is always a popular topic whether you are early or late in your career.

#9 – What does a high value conference look like? – There are many ways to spend time and money on professional development, some conferences provide unique value.

#8 – Family ties – we all have a story – It’s important to know where we come from to understand who we are.

#7 – Technology making a difference at scale – One of my personal favorites! The power of technology takes many forms. In Africa, drones can be lifesaving.

#6 – 8 Signs of a strong security culture – Security is always a topic of interest as threats continue to increase and organizations are challenged to keep up. Continue reading →

Holiday stress? Remember your big rocks

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It’s holiday season. Are you stressing or relaxing? Are you hosting or bringing a dish to someone’s house? Are you braving the highways or airports? Are you questioning whether you bought the right gifts canstockphoto11846362 (1) holiday stressfor all the right people? Or trying to figure out when you can possibly take time to do gift shopping. Are you arguing with family over something that later you’ll decide was stupid? So many ways to be stressed at this time of year.

And so many ways to be with people we love. On business calls this week I’ve talked with people anxiously waiting for their college age kids to return home for their holiday break, people getting ready to have housefuls of out of town relatives with them for the next week, and others who are taking their family on a ski trip for the holidays.

For me, it’s all about being with loved ones. There will be the annual Schade Family Christmas Sleepover this weekend with my two daughters and their husbands and what I fondly call the “Fab Four” – my four grandkids who range in ages from 2 to 6 years old. Yes, it will be chaotic, but fun.

There will be the Christmas day dinner at my daughter’s house an hour away with her in-law’s family. It is her first time hosting everyone on Christmas and her stress is building. 15 adults and 6 kids for dinner. She works a 12-hour shift as a nurse practitioner on Christmas Eve so she’s trying to figure out when she will get everything done and ready. We’ll get there in time to help before everyone else arrives and she and her husband can delegate any task to us that they want to.

My holiday gift shopping is done. I subscribe to the “keep it simple” approach. It’s too easy to go overboard. For each grandkid, there will be one big present to unwrap. Then each pair of siblings will get an “experience”. Choice of more gymnastics or swim lessons for one family. Annual zoo membership for the other. As one of my daughters said to me a few years ago – get them experiences, they have plenty of toys.

The stockings hung at our house will be from nana and papa, not Santa. Continue reading →

Give the gift of girl power

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Every day is a good day to encourage reading and learning. And every day is a good day to buy books for kids. The holiday season is a time when many of us are looking for book recommendations for the young canstockphoto20702129 (1) girl power booksones in our lives.

With four grandkids and six grand nieces and nephews, I buy a lot of kid’s books. Of these ten young people, six are girls. When looking at books for the girls, I’m particularly interested in finding ones that will inspire them and teach them to be strong, smart girls who can be and do anything they aspire to. And, of course, I like to encourage an interest in STEM fields.

A few of the books I’m looking forward to buying for my granddaughters when they are a little older:

  • Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World, by Rachel Ignotofsky, highlights the contributions of women to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
  • Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World, by Katherine Halligan, celebrates inspiring women who have changed the world.
  • Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, by Francesca Cavallo, is a collection of bedtime stories of extraordinary women both past and present, each told as a fairy tale.
  • She Persisted and She Persisted Around the World, by Chelsea Clinton, describe the struggles of 26 remarkable, diverse and tenacious women.

There is a great series by Andrea Beaty that I’ve already introduced to my oldest granddaughter who just turned six. I gave her Rosie Revere, Engineer last Christmas. The other two books in the series are Ada Twist, Scientist and Iggy Peck, Architect.  Rosie, Ada, and Iggy are friends who pursue their passions with persistence while celebrating and learning from their failures.

If you have young girls to shop for this holiday season, I hope you will consider one of these books. And if you are looking for organizations to support as you consider your year-end charitable contributions, take a look at Girls Inc. With local organizations in cities across the country they inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. Their message couldn’t be any clearer.

Related Posts:

STEM gift ideas for 2017

WANTED: STEM gift ideas for kids

STEM for the holidays

Yes you can: encouraging girls to pursue IT careers

Physician satisfaction with EHRs

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I am a huge fan of Dr. Atul Gawande. Who isn’t? He is a surgeon, an author and one of the most insightful and influential physicians of our time. His books are best sellers and his articles in The New Yorker canstockphoto3914104 (1) physician computermagazine are widely read. He was recently named as CEO of the non-profit-seeking health care venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to deliver better outcomes, satisfaction, and cost efficiency in care. He will be the opening keynote speaker at HIMSS19 in Orlando this coming February.

His books include Better, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, and The Checklist Manifesto. I gave one of his early books to all my IT leaders one holiday season. My tradition was to give them an insightful and inspiring book each year. Gawande’s books are clearly some of the best for health care leaders.

Gawande has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1998. His latest piece was titled “The Upgrade: Why Doctors Hate Their Computers”. It’s a long read but worth the time if you work in health IT and care about your physicians. Gawande describes the challenges of EHR’s from the front lines of medicine. He talks about the significant amount of time spent doing documentation after a patient visit and the loss of physician to patient connection with the computer competing for attention in the exam room.

In discussing physician burnout, he referenced Berkeley psychologist Christina Maslach’s work studying occupational burnout where she defined burnout as a combination of three distinct feelings – emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a sense of personal ineffectiveness. He noted that in 2014, 54%% of physicians reported at least one of the three symptoms compared to 46% three years earlier. He shadowed a scribe and talked with surgeons and primary care physicians on the impact of the EHR on their work and their time. He learned from a patient who works as a construction supervisor that others are also challenged in their work to make the necessary human connections. Continue reading →