My Heroes

With gratitude – yes, even in 2020

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Difficult as 2020 has been, it is my hope that each of us can find something to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. If you have lost a loved one to COVID, I know that no words can take away your pain and grief. If you are a “long hauler”, I hope that you are finding support from others as you navigate your ongoing health issues. If you have lost your employment due to the economic downturn, I hope you are finding support from your network to find a new job.

Many times, during the past 9 months I have said to my family and friends – I can’t complain, I’m healthy and alive. I never really felt my age, but since March I have been reminded that I am an “elder”. I am overall healthy with no underlying conditions but I’m in that over 65 group. My husband is 4 years older than me and does have some medical conditions. We have been mask wearers since mid-March and do our best to minimize our risks.

I have much to be grateful for. Healthcare workers caring for COVID patients on the front lines and scientists working to develop a vaccine. All those who support them in ways we see and don’t see. And yes, that includes the IT and HTM teams in every health system who provide solutions and systems that the clinicians depend on.

I am also grateful for all the essential workers – at the grocery store, providing public transportation, delivering packages, and the police and firefighters who protect us.

My family are my big rocks. And that has never been truer than this year. I am eternally grateful for them. Continue reading →

Well past time to support our healthcare workers

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Any graph or heat map you look at, one thing is obvious – the coronavirus is out of control and spreading rapidly. New coronavirus cases have jumped by more than a third in the U.S. over the past seven days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, the fastest pace since late March. Every day since Election Day, more than 100,000 people in the country have tested positive for the virus with a daily record of over 187,957 new cases last Friday per Worldometers.info. We went from 10 million new cases to 11 million in just one week. And we have lost over 250,000 lives.

We saw heartbreaking stories on the news from ICUs in the Northeast during March and April. Then stories from southern states. And now from hospitals in the Midwest. But when you look at the heat maps, the virus is everywhere now.

Listen to any healthcare worker and one more thing is obvious – they are exhausted and burning out. They tell story after story of how hard it is to work 12- and 18-hour shifts caring for COVID patients only to drive home past crowded bars.

We have seen exhausted physicians and nurses share their stories for months. I cannot tell their stories, but I can share them. And I can encourage you to do the same. But more importantly, I can encourage you to take the basic steps needed at this point – messages we have all heard for nearly 9 months now – wear a mask, socially distance, and wash your hands frequently.

This virus is not a hoax. It is not something you can ignore or deny. A story from a nurse in the Dakotas is the latest to go viral. She describes patients who yell at her and say she does not need to wear PPE because they don’t have COVID, right up until they are intubated.

Our healthcare workers truly are heroes, but they are at a breaking point. Our hospitals are at or nearing capacity. There are over 73,000 people hospitalized with COVID, another record since the pandemic started. Field hospitals are opening again in many states. Continue reading →

Make your voice heard, your vote counts!

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Like more than 75 million people, I have already cast my vote. My husband and I were there on the first day of early voting in our state. Millions of voters are willing to stand in long lines to vote. And at a time when new COVID-19 cases are averaging over 72,000 a day.

We are on track for record voter turnout before the election is over. In 2016, about 60% of eligible voters actually voted. Given early voting numbers, the projected 2020 total votes could be record breaking at over 150 million compared to about 135 million in 2016. Voter suppression is real and has taken many forms in this election cycle. It is already too late for mail-in ballots in many states – you will have to take it to a dropbox. And yet, early voting is at a record high.

Yes, I voted for Biden. That should be no surprise if you know me or have read many of my blog posts. I do believe this is the most consequential election in our lifetime. When the votes are counted, it will be either Biden or Trump.

The number of undecided voters is at a record low. If you are one of those undecided voters or leaning towards Trump despite all your concerns, I offer up a few statements for your consideration from some unlikely sources on why they also support Biden:

  • Former Republican Party Chairman, Michael Steele has endorsed Biden. He clearly and thoughtfully articulates his position as a longtime Republican in a recent podcast “My Country Matters: Why I am Endorsing Biden”. In the last few minutes of it, he talks about leadership, decency, and character. He quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in saying “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
  • A conservative New Hampshire newspaper, The Union Leader, has not endorsed a Democrat for President in a 100 years. Their editorial “Our Choice is Joe Biden” says “We have found Mr. Biden to be a caring, compassionate and professional public servant. He has repeatedly expressed his desire to be a president for all of America, and we take him at his word. Joe Biden may not be the president we want, but in 2020 he is the president we desperately need. He will be a president to bring people together and right the ship of state.”
  • The CEO of Expensify, David Barrett, has publicly endorsed Biden in an email to 10M customers entitled “Protect democracy, vote for Biden”. In his opening he says, “That’s right, I’m saying a vote for Trump, a vote for a third-party candidate, or simply not voting at all — they’re all the same, and they all mean — I care more about my favorite issue than democracy. I believe Trump winning is more important than democracy. I am comfortable standing aside and allowing democracy to be methodically dismantled, in plain sight.” His full email is included in this Business News article.

I saw a story of a 102-year-old woman born before women had the right to vote who said this is the most consequential election in her life as she cast her vote. If she can get out and vote, so can you.

Don’t sit this one out. Make a plan to vote and help your family and friends make a plan. Make your voice heard. Every vote matters. This election must be decided at the ballot box by your vote, not the courts.

Resources and Related Posts:

I Will Vote

When We All Vote

Fair Fight

Vote your values

Forward together

12 more days – forward together

When healthcare becomes personal

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When you get a call that your husband has been taken to the ER by ambulance, it is hard not to think the worst. I got that call last Wednesday. The good news is that by late Friday night Tom was OK’d for discharge from the hospital. But we still do not have the answers needed. More tests and results should help us better understand what happened and why it happened so together with his PCP and specialists we can develop a go forward plan.

I have worked in healthcare for over 35 years. Our family has dealt with various minor health issues and been able to access the best healthcare available. I have the utmost respect and gratitude for health professionals and all they do.

Through this experience I have seen healthcare through the patient and family lens in a different way. I have several takeaways worth sharing.

Emergency resources – Know when to call your PCP, go to the nearest urgent care center, call 911 or head right to the hospital ER. Minutes can matter.

Friends and family – I can’t say enough here. Tom was visiting a friend when the incident started. She took him to the closest Urgent Care, they called an ambulance fairly quickly and he was taken to the closest ER. The friend reached out to another friend thinking that person might know how to contact me. Fortunately, he did. We are setting up the Emergency Contact feature on our phones for the future. On the first call with the ED physician, I did a 3-way with my daughter who is a nurse practitioner. I wanted her in the loop from the start – to help interpret what I was being told, help educate me, and advocate for Tom.

Clinician in the family – If you are fortunate as we are to have a clinician in your family, let them help you. They are invaluable. Listen to them, loop them in on calls to ask all the right questions, and let them educate you. Our daughter spent ½ hour on the phone with the attending physician before Tom was discharged while I drove to get him. She then explained it all to me and started doing more research on her own.

Accessible and Integrated EHR – Now we are in my domain. Continue reading →

COVID-19: The good, the bad, the different

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When it comes to COVID-19, there is little good. But every report that reflects progress is good news. Whether it is progress in how best to treat hospitalized patients, progress towards a vaccine, or the number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths trending downward. I saw one of those reports just a few days ago when Shereef Elnahal, President and CEO, University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey shared their good news on social media:

“We made it.

For the first time since the #covid19 pandemic started, University Hospital has ZERO patients with coronavirus in house.

After over 1,000 discharges, leading northern NJ’s regional response, and folks in the City of Newark wearing masks, socially distancing, and getting tested, we hit a milestone that we’ve been hoping for since a time when almost every patient in our hospital had coronavirus.

So proud!”

There are probably many more hospital leaders in the Northeast who can finally report this same good news. And they have reason to be very proud of what they and their teams have done for their communities.

But there is plenty of bad. A health crisis with nearly 200,000 deaths and a projection that there could be over 400,000 deaths by the end of the year. An economic crisis with millions unemployed.

Another evolving bad news story is what we are learning about the “long-haulers”. These are people who had COVID-19 and months later report a variety of long-term symptoms. Continue reading →

Vote your values

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My mother was just a little girl when women in this country won the right to vote in 1920. Her mother raised her to be a strong and independent woman. And in turn she raised my sister, two brothers, and me to not only be strong and independent but also to be kind and caring. We learned early on about social justice and equality. My sister and I came of age during the women’s movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We each have two daughters. Along with our husbands, we raised them to be strong, independent, kind, and caring women.

This week marks the centennial anniversary of women having the right to vote. The passage of the 19th amendment guaranteed and protected women’s constitutional right to vote. But this right did not come easy. The suffrage movement dates to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention that passed a resolution in favor of women’s suffrage. A women’s right to vote came only after the suffragists organized for decades, marched in the streets, and were arrested. But they persisted and finally succeeded 70 years later.

This week also marks another historic first. Senator Kamala Harris is the first woman of color to be nominated for the second highest office in our country by a major political party.

White men are 31% of the U.S. population but hold 65% of elected offices. White men have long governed and made policy decisions affecting all of us. There continue to be record numbers of women running for office at local, state, and national levels. The face of government is changing. It is looking more like all of us and therefore more representative.

The right to vote is a fundamental right of a free society. Voter suppression is real and takes various forms. This is the time to be informed – know the rules and deadlines in your state. Make sure you are registered. Know your options for mail-in or in-person voting. Exercise your right. Live your values.

As I walk my neighborhood 3-4 miles a day, I see many yard signs for candidates in advance of a local primary in September. I expect to see yard signs for the November 3rd election soon. But the yard signs that have the greatest impact are the ones that express the values and beliefs of the people who live there – the ones that say:

We Believe: Black Lives Matter — No Human is Illegal — Love is Love — Women’s Rights are Human Rights — Science is Real — Water is Life — Kindness is Everything — Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere

Vote on November 3rd or before if you can. Vote your values – for you and generations to come. 

Resources: 

When We All Vote

Fair Fight

Be a part of the change

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I have watched with sadness, anger, and disappointment the events of the past week. Amid a public health crisis and a historic level of unemployment that are disproportionately impacting people of color we saw captured on video the death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of four police officers in Minneapolis.

I am a liberal white woman. I grew up in a white neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis. As a young adult, I lived in South Minneapolis and later North Minneapolis – much more racially diverse parts of the city. My sister and brothers, nephew and nieces, and their children all still live in the Minneapolis area. My nephew has lived for over 20 years just off Lake Street in South Minneapolis where nearly every business has been damaged or destroyed in the past week. But this destruction was not limited to Lake Street which you saw on the news. It happened all over the Twin Cities area as people intent on causing trouble and more divisions scattered to set fires and smash windows. As of late Sunday night, 270 businesses had been damaged or destroyed. It broke my heart to see that beautiful, diverse city so broken. And then to see that destruction spread in other cities over the weekend.

I am old enough to remember the riots and social unrest of 1968. I came of age during the women’s movement in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. I have been to my share of peaceful marches and protests over the decades starting with an anti-war demonstration in 1970 on the University of Minnesota campus with one of my high school teachers and several classmates. In recent years, my husband and I have showed up for women’s rights, gun control, and immigration reform.

While I have experienced sexism, I also experience white privilege. I try to understand racism and its impact on people, but I cannot fully understand what it is like to be a person of color in America.

As a citizen, it is our right to peacefully protest. Thousands of people are in the streets in every major city across this country peacefully protesting racism and police brutality. A small number of extremists are turning these protests to violence and destruction each night.

We are seeing the best and the worst in people right now. Continue reading →

Year of the Nurse: We must support our nurses

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The first time I cried during this pandemic was March 17 when I read that in Italy people over 60 years old were being left on gurneys in the hallway to choke on their own sputum. Patients with coronavirus had

Message from Brigham and Women’s Hospital OR nurses: #StayHome

exceeded the hospitals’ capacity. I had been watching the news and stories from Italy closely in anticipation of what was going to happen in our country assuming we were just a few weeks behind them in this crisis. I cried then not only for Italy but for myself. I wondered if I was going to be one of those over 60 left to die if our hospitals were also unable to handle the potential number of very sick COVID-19 patients.

The second time I really teared up was when I thought about my daughter who is the Chief Nurse Practitioner (NP) on the inpatient orthopedic/spine service at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in the Boston area and reassigned to work shifts in the ICU with COVID-19 patients. I feared the worst for my family. That she would get exposed and transmit it to her husband and five-year-old daughter who both have very bad asthma and are allergic to almost everything. We knew this virus was not just killing elders. People of all ages and especially those with underlying conditions were and are still at high risk.

Most of the times I have had tears since then has been watching a nurse or physician tell their story on the news. Describing what it is like to care for intubated COVID-19 patients, helping their patients’ families understand there is nothing more they can do, and sharing the fears they have for their own families when they go home from their shift. I have also cried when I see the stories of family members dying within days of each other from this virus, many of them people of color who are essential workers who can’t stay home.

I have listened to my own daughter describe the days she was assigned to work an ICU shift with COVID-19 patients. While it was not the overall intensity of what we have seen on the news in New York City hospitals, every individual case she described was just as sad and heartbreaking. And the emotional and physical toll on the nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists was obvious.

On the brighter side of this crisis, I have smiled with joy as healthcare workers in NYC celebrate the 500th or 1000th COVID-19 patient discharged from their hospital. Continue reading →

Gratitude at a difficult time

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As the weeks of staying at home roll into months, I have nothing to complain about. We can do this. We have to do this. As some of the toughest weeks are yet to come, it is a good time to practice both positivity and gratitude. What I’m grateful for:

A child’s sidewalk art found on recent dog walk.

  • The doctors and nurses on the front line fighting this invisible virus, risking exposure themselves while caring with compassion for their patients.
  • The healthcare staff throughout our hospitals who support those clinicians.
  • The workers at every step of the food supply chain.
  • The truck drivers and delivery drivers moving needed goods.
  • The police and fire departments and other city workers keeping us safe.
  • The health experts who are telling it like it is.
  • The researchers and scientists who are working hard on testing, treatments and a vaccine.
  • The government officials who are leading based on facts and protecting their citizens.
  • The manufacturers who have pivoted to make needed supplies for our hospitals.
  • The health technology companies rolling out solutions for hospitals to manage during this crisis.
  • The journalists who are keeping us informed and searching for truth.
  • The technology and infrastructure that allows us to work from home and stay virtually connected.

And on the personal front, I’m grateful that:

  • I can stay connected virtually with my family and friends
  • I have a daughter who lives close enough to help do grocery delivery, so we only have to go out to walk the dogs and get exercise
  • My soulmate, Tom, and I will celebrate 44 years of marriage this week. I wouldn’t want to be staying at home with anyone else!

The growing number of COVID-19 cases and deaths is truly numbing. It makes us want to turn the news off. But remember that each of them is a person, with a family and a story.

May you find much to be grateful for as together we get through this crisis and do your part to flatten the curve.

How daily life has changed

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Whether you live in a state with strict stay at home orders from your governor or are still going about your life with few adjustments other than social distancing and more frequent hand washing, your life has changed.

You may be an essential worker reporting to your workplace each day or adapting the best you can to working from home or fearing a layoff or already out of a job at this point.

You may have elder parents living with you or other family members with health issues that make them high risk.

Regardless, your life has changed. The fears, uncertainty, anger, sadness, exhaustion, confusion, and so many other emotions and feelings are real. We all have them.

Self-care is important for all of us. As a CIO/CMIO colleague keeps telling his team, it’s a marathon not a sprint. The image I used this week is one of my favorites shared on Facebook by Brooke Anderson, a photographer in California. It’s a good reminder of how we need to take care of ourselves..

Here’s what my daily life looks like now:

  • Staying at home: My husband and I haven’t been anywhere in 2 weeks except for when I picked up takeout at a local restaurant over a week ago.
  • Working from home: Splitting time between our StarBridge Advisors business and work with a health system client on a variety of projects.
  • Exercise: Walking our two little dogs and trying to get 10K steps each day keeping appropriate social distance with all the other walkers. There is a joy in seeing the spring flowers and buds on trees change each day – gives me hope!
  • Family connection: Talking to my sister in Minnesota where I grew up and where all my three siblings and their families live. Keeping in touch with my daughters and their changed lives. One daughter is a Nurse Practitioner who will soon be caring for COVID-19 patients while her husband adapts to working full-time from home and their 3 and 5-year-old kids play together. The other daughter was already working from home; her husband is adapting to working from home while their first grader is doing the eLearning school program and their 5-year-old plays.
  • Sharing resources: It’s hard to not be in the thick of it knowing what healthcare organizations are going through and how IT teams are working hard to support them. I’m channeling that energy into supporting Bill Russell and “This Week in Health IT” with a growing number of free COVID-19 resources for health IT teams.
  • Social media with a purpose: I try to share what is most informative and useful as well as positive and motivating.
  • Managing how much news I watch: On my busiest workdays I only watch at night. On more flexible days, I get snippets mid-day. In the spirit of being positive, I will say that the leadership demonstrated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is the leadership we need at all levels of government – fact based, informed, action oriented, and empathic.

And as the days blend together, the weekly routine now includes a couple new things. We gratefully receive grocery delivery that our nearby daughter has helped coordinate. We do a weekly family video call where the four grandkids stick their face right up to the camera and call out to their cousins then eventually go play so the six adults can talk and check in with each other. And we make a quiet moment to do Sunday online church which are YouTube messages from our ministers that we can watch anytime.

No matter what your days look like now, practice self-care. There are many resources out there to support you. The latest This Week in Health IT podcast – “Mental Wellness During Crisis” with Dana Udall PhD, Chief Clinical Officer at Ginger is definitely worth listening to.

Whatever you might fear or feel inconvenienced by during this pandemic, think about the healthcare workers who like firemen run into the burning building, not away from it. They are going to work so we can stay home. They and all the essential workers who are keeping things running are the true heroes. To them I say thank you, be safe and well. To all of you, take care of yourself and those you love. We will get through this – together.