What happens in a medical organization when the healthcare team learns to care for each other? On episode 190 of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast, Dr. Jen Barna chats with special guest Dr. Natasha Beauvais about how prioritizing care within the organization can impact job satisfaction, patient care, and employee retention. She also shares how her practice has established a positive workplace culture: by recognizing what each person can do to make sure those around them succeed, creating high levels of trust, and cultivating joy in the practice of medicine.

Event Highlights:

• “I did have an instantaneous moment in a job interview very early in my career that helped me realize how important it is to focus on what other people need in their work. I was applying for a job at Unity Healthcare and the doctor who was interviewing me said, ‘Oh, what you need is…’ I just couldn’t believe that she was asking me what I needed. And that tiny sentence represented a huge shift in how all of us can approach work. What does the person need to succeed? What does the person need to feel supported?”
• “Doctors in [the concierge model] are very stable. We don’t have any turnover—people are here because they love medicine; they wanna do it in a more thorough way. And that’s what this practice allows.”
• “Three out of four staff members had very substantial things going on outside of work. And during our check-in, we were really able to just recognize each other in whatever was happening in and out of the office. I think just having that space created a lot more trust between the four of us. And at the end of the process, I felt like we were just able to speak much more honestly with each other.”
• “One of the most powerful things is realizing how critical it is for us to be cultivating skills in others instead of just problem-solving. One downfall of any organization is to rely on those people who are naturally the doers and never work to grow the skills of everyone else. Then the doers get really tired and they have nothing left to give.”
• “If we recognize that our most important job is to grow others, suddenly we really shift how we approach any problem. We’re not just supposed to get everything done [ourselves].”
• “I like the re-characterization of cultivating skills as caring, because I think what we really try to remember is – Is this good care? And mostly we’re talking about medical care for patients, but of course, we really want to be caring for our staff as well.”
• “I think if we really focus on good care for each other, we’re so much better positioned to offer good care for the patients. But sometimes in healthcare, we’re under such high demand to do good healthcare for the patient—and we’re so behind all the time—that it’s hard to take the time to create a system where we can really focus on being good to each other, which of course allows us to provide better care for patients.”