This woman was part of a small but mighty team that ran the Innovation Ecosystem within the VA.
She arrived visibly excited to share about their work, and after learning more about it, I understand why.
“When COVID came, our team kicked into high gear,” she said. “Our team thrives on opportunities to respond to changes in the healthcare setting and patient needs. It almost feels like we responded to COVID like Americans before us have responded in wartime—immediately shifting our infrastructures to meet new demands.”
She shared a few stories with me that illustrated the impact their work was having on health outcomes not just within the VA, but across the country.
One preventative-care partnership they initiated only a year ago had resulted in the complete elimination of all major amputations for some of VA’s sickest patients. She hoped the agility they proved during COVID would remain a part of their daily approach to healthcare going forward.
“This has been a really meaningful experience for me, especially because of the relationships we’ve built,” she said. “I would like to be able to look back on this time and feel inspired and proud.”
Listener Poet Jenny Hegland
Veterans' Affairs Center for Development & Civic Engagement
September 2020
Innovation Ecosystem
We know we cannot innovate alone.
We know we cannot determine the solutions
that will transform healthcare
over the next ten years, by ourselves.
We know innovation happens
in the spaces between.
So, we work every day with patients:
Veterans excited and invested
in giving feedback and trying new technologies
for even the slightest chance
of helping other Veterans.
And we work every day with partners:
industry, academia, start-ups,
big companies, small companies--
any company that shares our mission
and is positioned to design, develop, and scale.
And we work every day as an intentionally-
curated team to build infrastructure
that spans across the enterprise;
and we ramp into high gear as soon as we see
the opportunity to respond in times of need.
Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system?
She was very proud of her daughter and has hopes for “a bright future that’s as pain free as possible”
“I’m trying to focus on doing little things to make people feel better during everything that’s going on in the world,” she told me.
“It’s hard to see others struggle,” she said. “How can I help with their struggle without struggling myself?”
"I'd tell her it's OK to be loud...it's OK to challenge and to bring all of you into these spaces where no one looks like you..."
“I'm continuously questioning: did I do it right?" she said. "I’ve always done a good amount of second-guessing, but I’m re-learning how to show up differently.”
“It’s weird,” she said. “This is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
"It changed me; It changed the way I look at life," said this woman about her profound experience during her pregnancy.
“It’s been more challenging than normal lately,” she said. “I’m only one person. It's a struggle for me to say no, but I can’t do everything that’s being asked of me right now.”
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
“I like feeling small,” he told me. “Nature has always made me feel small.” He described the sense of wonder that feeling gave him.
“I feel like I have decision fatigue,” she told me. It was normal for her to make many choices at work, but COVID had dramatically increased the number of medical decisions she had to make at home.
“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.“ Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off.
This physician discussed being the only one in his practice network with expertise in patients with a specific type of chronic pain.
“Our constituents are uniquely affected by the pandemic,” they said. This poemee was an educational psychologist who spoke about how much they missed working in person with med students, healthcare staff, and medical educators.
"I grew from the experience – though I think it aged me 10 years!" This is how a resident described a turning point with a specific patient when he recognized how burned out he was.
Although he had been through many stressful experiences in his life and recently, he always held onto his positive outlook. He took particular care to use words intentionally, paying attention to their connotations, so that his positivity extended to those that he interacted with as well.
“There’s a constant feeling inside that I should be doing more,” she said. “But I also want to be kind to myself and recognize all that I’ve given.”
These members of the Wellness team in the Department of Neurology at the University of Colorado each spoke about the importance of community and connection.
She said she wanted a poem about the importance of CPR. As both a nurse and a CPR instructor, she spoke about how the rhythms of certain familiar songs helped her students internalize the rate of compression required.
He brought the tools of mindfulness and self-care to medical students, many of whom had been studying all this past year, 10 hours a day, day after day, in isolation.
The pandemic had forced this woman to slow her life down drastically. Before, she’d travelled around every month for work, never stopping, working hard because she cared about her job. The slower pace created by social distancing had reminded her to cherish everything that life had to offer outside of work.
He had recently lost his father to COVID-19 and was reflecting on forgiveness. For the majority of his life with his father, they did not have a positive relationship. However, in the last three years of life, his father lost his memory and his personality changed into someone who was loving and kind.