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We are delighted to host, Susan T. Hingle, MD, FRCP, MACP (Sue) today to talk about her journey in medicine and the creation of the Center for Human and Organizational Potential (cHOP) at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, for which she is the Associate Dean. cHop has a vision of “professional and personal fulfillment realized for all.” cHOP’s mission is to create an environment in which inclusive partnerships unleash the individual and organizational potential of SIU’s people and communities to learn, thrive, and excel. It is a model that includes pillars professional development, leadership and excellence, wellness, and organizational development and change management.
She shares how advice from her residency program director encouraged her to get involved in changing the healthcare system, leading her to create Rush Community Service Initiatives Program to help the uninsured and underinsured in Chicago. Sue continued her career in medicine and now leads initiatives at the cHOP.
One aspect of Sue’s work at the cHOP that really stands out is how healthcare and administrative professionals from across the organization study and learn together. This helps create a “leveling of the hierarchy”, a challenge that is prominent in healthcare today.
Sue also shares about her personal journey for wellbeing and shares some of her favorite books and resources, including the message on the bottom of her emails which reads, “Do not feel compelled to answer this e-mail on evenings or weekends, unless it makes your life easier, giving her team permission to take time off.”
About Susan Hingle, MD, FRCP, MACP
Dr. Hingle is a general internist and a professor of medicine and director of faculty development. Dr. Hingle is a fellow with the prestigious Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program. She has received several teaching awards including the Golden Apple Award, the Excellence in Teaching Outstanding Teacher Award and the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University and a medical degree from Rush University Medical College. She completed an internal medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center, where she served as chief resident of internal medicine. Dr. Hingle is married and has two sons.
During the podcast, Sue referenced the Three Good Things exercise which we highly recommend. Learn more at Greater Good in Action: Three Good Things.
To learn more about Sue’s work, you can visit the Center for Human & Organizational Potential at SIU School of Medicine or connect with her on Twitter or Instagram.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you usually find your podcasts.
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Show Transcript (via AI – please excuse any errors):
Monica (00:05):
Okay. Well, I’m very excited to have a special guest with me here today. Dr. Susan Hingle is a general internist and a professor of medicine who serves as Associate Dean for the Center for Human and Organizational Potential. She’s also the Director of Faculty Development at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Dr. Hingle is a fellow with the prestigious Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program, and she earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University, a medical degree from Rush University Medical College, and completed an internal medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center where she served as Chief Resident of Internal Medicine. Dr. Hingle, or Sue, as I’ll call her in the interview, is married and has two sons. She grew up in Decatur, Illinois and is extremely proud to be part of SI’s mission. So. Awesome. Sue, thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. It’s good to see you again.
Sue (01:10):
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you even more for doing this really important work.
Monica (01:16):
Thank you. It’s exciting. We were just talking about, it’s the, the Friday before a long weekend when we’re recording this and Sue’s been covering call for a little bit, so it’s been an interesting time.
Sue (01:33):
Definitely. Definitely.
Monica (01:35):
So maybe we could just start off by having you tell us a little bit about your story and your background and how you got to where you are today.
Sue (01:46):
Sure. you know, part of it was in my bio that you just read. So I grew up in Decatur, Illinois, which is about an hour from where I work. When I was growing up, my, I’m gonna probably do this in maybe there’s, I sort of view kind of three parts of my journey to where I’m at. The first part is related to growing up my mom was sick quite often. She had a couple of chronic illnesses and then ended up with two different cancers. And she passed away when I was 18. And when I was growing up I, I had a good, I had a good life, but we didn’t have a lot of healthcare in the region. The SIU School of Medicine was really pretty new. And in Decatur we didn’t have GI doctors, we didn’t have a lot of oncologists.
Sue (02:51):
So my parents traveled for healthcare quite a bit. And when I look at, so dad still lives over in Decatur and I have two sisters who live there. When I look at not only Decatur, but really the, the spans of central and Southern Illinois, it really has changed a lot in those 30, 40 years because of the school of medicine. So, SIU was founded to really train physicians who were going to work in central and southern Illinois. It’s a really, it’s a mission based medical school. And the missions are fourfold, it’s education, it’s patient care, it’s research. So sort of the typical missions of academic me medicine, but it’s one of the few medical schools that has service to the community embedded in the mission. And when you look at geographically the impact that School of Medicine has had on central and southern Illinois, it’s really amazing to, to see the changes that have happened.
Sue (04:03):
And so kids now growing up in Decatur and other places in central and southern Illinois, their parents, if they get sick, they can access healthcare. Right, Right. Where they’re at. And so that’s really what brought me to I, and has kept me at I u. So that’s part one. The second part is kind of my journey to, to advocacy. I have been involved with organized medicine since I was a medical student and definitely a resident. So when I was a medical student a friend of mine, a fellow medical student, we started a, a free clinic for pregnant women on the south side of Chicago. That’s amazing. And, and when we did that, we learned that medicine is a complex system. There’s so many, it’s more that obviously the physician patient relationship is critical, but it’s so much more than that.
Sue (05:06):
You know, patients have to exist and the physicians and other healthcare team members have to work within this complicated system. And so we were able to work with the system to figure out how to provide medications for our patients, how to get the hospital to agree most of these patients, this was pre Affordable Care Act. They were uninsured. And so we got the, the hospital to agree to let the physicians deliver their babies without charging them for that. And so we really, it was we learned about systems of care and the importance of that jumping. That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It was really cool. That actually started something at Rush that is still in existence called the Rush Community Service Initiatives Program. And it’s all these community service programs that are all student run. It, there’s staff support for it and faculty support but they’re all student initiated and student run, which is really, really pretty cool.
Monica (06:19):
What a great accomplishment. How do you think you were able to get everyone to work together? Cause that’s pretty major. Getting people to deliver free care and really collaborate.
Sue (06:30):
I think reminding people of why they do what they do. Yeah, I think it’s like most, most things, if you can kind of get people back to, back to their mission, back to their why, identifying those shared common goals we’re more alike than we are different.
Monica (06:53):
Absolutely. And speaking of that mission, I’m wondering if you mentioned in your earlier story about your mother’s health issues. And I’m sorry to hear that. Do you feel like that’s part of what inspired you to go into medicine?
Sue (07:13):
Maybe So I actually, when I went to college, I thought I was going to do social work mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And my mom passed away when, when I was a freshman. And my maladaptive coping behaviors was to just really engrossed myself in my studies and like not pay attention to, to all these horrible feelings that I was having. And I was working with a professor in the zoology department through a work study program. And he said, You know, Thompson’s my maiden name. You know, Thompson, you’re smart enough to be a doctor. Why don’t you just become a doctor? And I’m like, Oh, okay. I’ll just become a doctor. And so I, it’s
Monica (08:03):
Easy
Sue (08:04):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I think there have been several times in my life’s journey that other people saw more for me than I saw for myself. And I’m so grateful for that. And that was one of those times.
Monica (08:18):
Wow. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve had a few of those in my career too, and they can really make a difference. So
Sue (08:24):
Definitely another one of those was in residency. My residency program director, who has been one of my most important mentors. He was another one who kind of continued me on my advocacy journey. And I was lamenting to him about how different care was with patients depending on their ability to pay. And that really frustrated me. Yeah. And he said, You know, you can do something about that. And I’m like, What can I do? I’m an intern. And he said, You can get, you can get involved in organized medicine and change policies. And that was my entree into my work with the American College of Physicians (ACP) which has continued. And I’ve been part of the ACP for my whole professional life now. And it kind of culminated. I served as the chair of the ACP Board of Governors, which is the grassroots part of the organization.
Sue (09:28):
And then I chaired the, the Board of Regents which is like the board of trustees, like the typical board. And through that was able to do some work related to gender equity to creating inclusive environments. It all kind of has led me to also the work that I’ve done at SIU which I think is maybe the third part of my story is you mentioned that I have two sons. One of my sons is on the autism spectrum. And has had a lot of challenging experiences in life without, with people not really accepting him or wanting to, to give him what he needs to be able to thrive. And I, I want a different life for him. I want him that he’s a, both of my boys are just amazing individuals. And I want the world to, to see all of their gifts and to appreciate all of their gifts. And so I really would love to, to continue to work to, to really create inclusive environments.
Monica (10:52):
That’s great. How old are your boys now?
Sue (10:55):
They are 17 and 20.
Monica (10:58):
Okay. Yeah. That can be challenging. Well, it sounds like it’s really helped fuel the work that you’re doing though, which is, is great.
Sue (11:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s all interrelated, for sure.
Monica (11:11):
Yeah. So tell us now about your work at SIU and the organization that you lead there. Cause I know you’re doing some tremendous things around creating a better workplace.
Sue (11:22):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I have had the privilege to start up and lead what’s called our Center for Human and Organizational Potential. And our mission is really to create an environment where through partnerships we work with others throughout the, the organization to unleash individual and organizational potential for everyone here to be able to learn, Thrive and Excel. And we do that through kind of three main pillars. Those pillars are professional development, leadership, and wellbeing. And it’s a little different because it’s really across the organization. So a lot of academic places really focus on the faculty and the trainees, and they forget this really, really key part of our team, which is everybody else.
Monica (12:24):
Right, right.
Sue (12:25):
And as we were developing this, we started out with kind of that old mindset that it was faculty and our medical students and residents, but we learned that that was never gonna be successful if we didn’t really pay attention to everyone else. And the environment the things that were making faculty and students and residents frustrated and not well, we’re the same things that we’re doing that to our staff. And we were able to, to really develop that, that mission. And our vision is personal and professional potential realized for all.
Monica (13:12):
I love that.
Sue (13:14):
And we’re just about three years in. So the timing was really good or really bad, depending on your perspective. It was good because we launched a little bit before the pandemic hit. And so really early on we were able to, to demonstrate a huge need for this. It was bad because the financial impact of the Pandemic has you know, really strained healthcare and well really our society in has a whole, but Right. So we’re we haven’t been able to grow as quickly as we, we need to really help everyone that that wants, wants assistance.
Monica (14:12):
You’ve done some amazing things. I remember when we spoke earlier, you mentioned the Accelerate Program mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And what I loved about that was that you are including everyone and like you said, not just the leadership or the physicians, but kind of everyone. And it’s a level playing field. Can you maybe tell us a little bit about the Accelerate program?
Sue (14:35):
Sure. so the Accelerate Program is part of our leadership pillar. We have a couple of other programs which are structured somewhat similarly, but it was designed by two of my great colleagues Sue Younga and John Mellinger. And it is really an emerging leaders program. And a couple of important goals. Obviously the, one of the goals is to, to train leaders. But I’d say just as important are two, two other goals. One is to really create a community of learning, and also in doing so, create a community of caring. And they’re learning together. They’re growing together, they’re getting to know each other as individuals, so they’re not just learning the content they are learning about each other. And we have people again, you mentioned we have faculty, we have staff, we have people who are early in their careers.
Sue (15:51):
We have people who are later in their careers who are having their first real leadership opportunity. And so they bring a whole different perspective and wisdom to conversations. There’s a lot of peer mentoring that goes on in the program. And this culminated the, we just started the second cohort, but the first cohort, actually, I think it was about this time last year that they, we had a virtual graduation ceremony. Oh. And each of them got to really say whatever they wanted. We, there was not a big script. We just said, you know, tell us what, what you wanna, what are you taking away from this? And it was incredibly powerful. The, everyone got something different out of it, but it was clear how meaningful it was to have had had this group to, to travel this leadership journey with. And so again, I think there’s the content piece. There’s the, the community of learning and the community of caring, which I feel are things that people really should pay attention to.
Monica (17:05):
I love that. And these groups, are they across different departments too? So people are having the ability to interact with others in different roles that they might not normally get to connect with?
Sue (17:17):
Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I don’t have, I’m not a numbers person, but I think we had people from maybe I wanna say 14 different departments. Nice. And that’s one of the, the challenges in healthcare and academic medicine is things are so siloed and so competitive. And when you do a program like this and you travel the journey together, I think whenever you can humanize things, it takes a lot of that competition out of it and opens your eyes to different ways to, to be able to do things. And that’s one of my big goals is to really just squash that hierarchy and break down those silos.
Monica (18:04):
I love that cuz we hear more and more about how we’re starting to make this shift to team based care. But it’s hard to have a team if it’s very hierarchical or competitive or you don’t know each other. And so, yeah, I just think that’s amazing work that you’re doing there.
Sue (18:23):
Well, I feel very very blessed to have this opportunity. And I’d say one of the, the highlights has been having the opportunity to build, build the team. And I couldn’t, we’re all very, very different than members of, of our team, but I couldn’t ask for a better group of people that they’re all fully, fully committed to that vision.
Monica (18:50):
That’s wonderful. And it’s a challenging time in healthcare right now too. We are hearing more and more about workforce shortages and increased rates of physical and mental burnout with caregivers and really kind of across the spectrum. And so there’s definitely a lot of challenges. What do you think it will take for us to start to improve that and maybe shift the culture of healthcare a little bit?
Sue (19:18):
That’s a great question. I’m on a quest to get people to, you’ve probably heard of the, the triple aim of healthcare. Yes. and then there is also some people will call it either the triple aim plus one or the quadruple aim. Yeah. So the triple aim is really to improve the patient experience, which is the, the quality of care, the patient satisfaction. The second piece is to improve the health of the population. So again, recognizing the importance of that system. And then the third is to reduce the cost. And a lot of the, the totally important work, you know, the triple aim, but it was done without additional resources. And when you’re trying to do all of those things without additional resources what’s gonna happen? Someone’s gonna have to do the work. And it ended up being our, our healthcare teams our physicians, our nurses, our medical assistants.
Sue (20:23):
And that’s when we really started to, to recognize the amount of burnout and unwellness and so my goal is to shift us away from the triple A plus one or the quadruple aim. And what I truly believe that we need to do to, to create a better culture and workplace in healthcare is to make wellness the priority. So take it out of a four part puzzle and have it be the, the priority because we know that when clinicians are healthy and well, they provide a better patient experience. There’s lots and lots of data that burned out. Physicians have lower patient satisfaction scores. We know that when you have a thriving physician, that patient outcomes are better. And now with the shift for paying for quality outcomes, you’re gonna start to impact the, the bottom line, the per capita cost in a positive way. We know that physicians and other healthcare team members, when they are healthy and well, they’re more likely to understand the entirety of their patients. So they understand the community, they get engaged with the community. And so they often have a different way of looking at population health. And so I truly believe that if you make wellness legal, that’s how you get to the triple aim. And if you make wellness, the, that’s how you really create a better culture because you’re really paying attention to the individuals who are doing the work.
Monica (22:11):
Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I think it goes back to that saying something about it’s hard to give from an empty cup. You know, if our providers and our caregivers and the staff are drained and depleted, it’s really hard for them to show up and give their, their full effort to the employees, even though they certainly do their best.
Sue (22:30):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, it’s interesting. Gosh, I think it was about this time last year, I one of my colleagues and friends sort of called me out for being a hypocrite. I know <laugh>, she no, it ended up being good. Yeah. Yeah. But I think a lot of people in healthcare do that. Again, we we’re caregivers, we take care of people Yeah. Often at the expense of ourselves. Absolutely. And I was struggling and she said, You know what? If you put all the energy that you put into the ACP into s I u and the ama, if you put all that energy into yourself, and my first response was, Now that would be selfish. And she said, Right. Listen to yourself. And I said, But it would. And she said, What do you say are your guiding principles in life?
Sue (23:34):
And one of the ones that I said was, Do one to others as you would have them do one to you. Yep. And love your neighbor as yourself, sort of different takes on that. And she said, I don’t think you love yourself. And I said, Yeah, I do. And she said, No, you don’t. You don’t take care of yourself. And she really got me reflecting. And I was not healthy. I was really, really overweight. I wasn’t exercising, I wasn’t eating well. I literally was surviving. Wow. And it took me a couple of months of reflection to, to realize that what she said was true. And this past year, I’ve really learned how to take care of myself. And for the first time in my life, I think I always intellectually bought into the concept that you’re better to others when you’re good to yourself. But I actually had never lived it. And interesting for this past year, I have lived it. I know that I’m, I’m a better physician, I’m a better colleague, I’m a better spouse, I’m a better mom, I’m a better sister. I’m a better everything because I’m healthy and well. Wow. And so I, I understand it really on a just kind soul level rather than just a cognitive level.
Monica (25:07):
Wow. I love that. So you’re really making that effort to kind of walk your talk and, and really showing up as a role model. I noticed at the, the bottom of your email, you had a couple of things. I was going back and preparing for the show, and I, one, I loved the books that you listed. The, the Book of Joy is one of my all-time favorite books. But you also had a statement at the bottom that said that something along the lines of, if you get this in the evening or on the weekends, that you don’t need to reply unless it’s more convenient with mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for you, which I just love because, you know, coming from some healthcare organizations where it was the norm to email and there’d be a full back and forth conversation with multiple members of the team at 10 o’clock at night on email or Saturday morning, you know, it just kind of never stopped to give people that permission to mm-hmm. <Affirmative> wait to respond to your message. I just love that
Sue (26:05):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And at first, I just, I, I had said I don’t expect you to answer this, but then someone said, But by you sending your email at nighttime, we still feel like you do expect that. And so I had to reflect, and I sometimes will work on evenings or weekends, because that allows me to be able to, if I wanna go for a walk in the middle of the day or to something at my kid’s school in the middle of the day, I still need to get the work done. Sure. But it frees me up. And so to me, it creates that flexibility. And so I hope, you know, when I change that wording, it really, unless it makes, you know, makes it easier for you, and it does make it easier for me to, to be able to live a full life and to decide when I want to do the work.
Monica (27:01):
Yeah. That’s great. I thought that was really powerful. And yeah. So I’m glad we got to, to talk about that a little bit. So are there some kind of emerging models or practices that you’re starting to see in healthcare or at I that are maybe kind of moving in the right direction?
Sue (27:24):
So I would say one, I have a couple of friends that I know who work for a primary care group called Iora. It’s a Medicare based group. And it really is a, a highly functioning team based approach that puts the patient at the center. They have health coaches, they have a lot of the support services, wraparound services for patients. They do home visits. That, that was one of the nice things I think in the pandemic in doing telehealth is getting invited, invited into the, the patient’s home. Yeah. Learned so much really important information that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. You know, about who all they lived with. You know, sometimes they bring family in, a lot of times they don’t who they live with, what hazards may be in the home.
Sue (28:39):
Medications, You know, I’d have them walk me to their medication cabinet and they’d have all these old medicines and things like that. And so we would have them dispose of those. Anyways, this practice that a couple of my colleagues work for home visits are part of it. But it really is putting the patient in charge. Like the patient can decide if they want home visits or if they want office visits. And right. Instead of the doctor deciding it’s an office visit or a home visit, the patient gets to decide. And I love the fact that, again, they in addition to a lot of the typical wraparound services, they have health coaches that are integrated into it. Kind of getting back to, to my experience of, even as a physician, I didn’t really know what I, as an individual needed to do to get healthy until I went on this journey this past year. And so that’s integrated into the care there.
Monica (29:38):
Nice. That’s great. So if you could wave a magic wand and really create a vision for the future of healthcare, what would that look like?
Sue (29:55):
Well, I think a little bit of what, what I just described, You know, as far as the, the I’d put patients in charge of their own they’d, they’d be the leader of their team. It would be really highly functioning, integrated team based care, but the patient would be the center of it. There’s always this I don’t know what the right word is, but this battle of who’s in charge of the team? Is it the doctor? Is it the, the advanced practice nurse? Is it the, the pharmacist who’s in charge to me? In the ideal world, the patient is in charge. They get to, they get to decide who’s on the team and how the team works. And it’s really allowing members of the team to function at their highest level. You know, one of the, the big challenges is again, in that drive to have high quality, cost effective care you have people doing things that they weren’t trained to do and that someone else maybe should be doing mm-hmm.
Sue (31:11):
<Affirmative>, you know, physicians providing information on healthy diets. We’re not trained to do that. The dietician should be doing that. Sure. We’re putting in data into the EMR so people can see if we’re keeping immunizations up to date for our patients we’re checking boxes that we checked the physician monitoring part of the, the record to make sure that the, the controlled substances were due and not being abused. All really, really, really important pieces of healthcare, but perhaps not the right people doing them. And so to me in that highly functioning team, it’s really letting people do the work that they’re trained to do.
Monica (32:09):
Yeah, I love that. Getting, getting the right people on the bus and the, the people in the right seat so that they can mm-hmm. <Affirmative> deliver care without burning everyone out too at the same time.
Sue (32:22):
Yeah.
Monica (32:22):
So one of the things that I’ve just really enjoyed about getting to meet you and visit with you a few times now is your bigger mission and just drive to kind of make the world a better place. How do you stay connected to that bigger vision? Because it can be challenging, you know, when you’re in the weeds and in the day to day of just working in an environment.
Sue (32:50):
Yeah. It definitely can get overwhelming. So I, I’d say a few things. I’d say one is I’m blessed to, to have my family who ground me and keep me focused. I would say another thing is my colleagues during the pandemic I started this exercise with one of my colleagues and friends who lives in New Mexico. Her name’s Eileen Barrett. And we started doing three good things. I don’t know if you have heard of three Good Things. It came out of University of California Berkeley, and it’s an evidence based reflective tool. And basically on a daily basis, you think of three good things. And we started doing it with each other. So we kind of became an accountability pair. And so either she would send them to me or I would send mine to her, and then it would sort of force the other one to, to do that. Yeah. And it was really, really helpful. And so whenever any of my colleagues or learners or other people in my life were struggling, we would start doing three good things. And Eileen and I still do it every day, and I have two other colleagues one that lives in Ohio and one here in Springfield that we do it on a regular basis. Some of the other people that I’ve done it with, it’s sort of, has fallen off. But so I think intentional reflection is another, another part of it.
Monica (34:43):
That’s such a powerful tool too. I’m glad you brought that up.
Sue (34:46):
And it’s so easy. It’s so easy. Yeah. There’s even an app that you can get on your phone that’ll send a, send a prompt to you saying, What are your three good things? You can set it for whatever time of day, and then you get this reminder, Oh, okay, I’m gonna reflect on this. Yeah. During my wellness journey, I started also meditating. Oh, good. I was having tachycardia and again, I wasn’t healthy and well, and so I learned how to meditate. And I start each morning out and, and each day with at least five, five to 10 minutes of guided meditation. And that again, kind of helps me get into that positive space. And then one other thing is I leave little sticky notes around like, like this one that says, Leave the world a better place. And so when I get frustrated, I’ve got this bright yellow paper that’s like, Okay, let’s remember what your mission is.
Monica (35:44):
I love that. And I think that that is such a simple but helpful kind of tool to just be a constant reminder to think about the bigger picture. So what, and who are some of your biggest influences? Like books, movies, people, experiences, those types of things?
Sue (36:05):
Well, I’ve talked about some of the, some of the experiences you know, with my mom and with my son books. So my all time favorite book is Man Search For Meaning by Victor Frankel.
Monica (36:25):
Yeah.
Sue (36:25):
And you know, that, that also is something that I, I’ve read that, gosh, dozens of times in my life. And that’s something that will always motivate me when I’m struggling, you know, to, to understand what what he went through and how he was able to, to still carry on with a positive mindset is really remarkable. So that, that’s my favorite book. I’d say two other books that have really influenced me are The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. I dunno if you’ve had the chance to read that.
Monica (37:09):
I haven’t. But I love Simon Sinek, so I’m a, I’m a fan. I don’t know why I haven’t read that one yet. And I’ve heard about it from Gabe Charbonneau, MD who was a previous guest. I know he’s a fan of that book as well. So tell us a little bit about that.
Sue (37:23):
Yeah, so it’s so a finite game is a game that there is an end. So, you know, at the end of four quarters or nine innings, the team with the highest score wins. So it’s a game that can be won. And the infinite game is really the pursuit of like a just cause. So committing to a vision, so like the work that you’re doing with the new future of work yeah, you’re committing to a vision of what that, that future looks like. That’s what the goal is and Right. You’re never gonna really reach that goal. Right. But that’s okay. That’s, you know, it’s infinite. And so it’s really working day after day, week after week, month after month to, to really make progress towards that, that infinite goal. And a lot of times when you do that it’s focused on what that causes, what that vision is rather than, than winning.
Sue (38:32):
Wow. When I first started cHOP, that’s our center here mm-hmm. <Affirmative> we our mission was actually very different than it is now. And a lot of it was about gaining recognition and it was sort of traditional academic missions. And I just kept saying, there’s, this just doesn’t feel right. This is not what our mission is. And we evolved our mission to, to what it is now, which is really helping people thrive, excel for the goal of making the organization better. Because when we do that, we’re going to make life better for patients for our community. And so that’s, that’s kind of the premise of the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. Definitely worth reading.
Monica (39:33):
I love that because often we’re challenged to create a goal and then figure out every single step that it’s gonna take to get there. But I think a lot of times when you do that, you’re not really thinking big enough. Like I always say, if you know all the steps to get there, you’re not thinking big enough. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. I’m never to read that book, but I also, I love the mission for your organization and I love the term Thrive and I actually use that in some of some of my materials as well, cuz that’s just so far beyond what we think about in the workplace. You know, we, we just haven’t really used that term in the past. And yeah, I think that’s interesting when you look at the statistics about how so many employees are disengaged and now we have this whole thing that’s been in the news lately about silent quitting, where employees are just doing the bare minimum. And one in, one in only one in four employees, I think was this statistic that actually feel like their organization cares about them. So three quarters of us don’t feel like our organization cares about us, so, Right. It’s really hard to do a good job when you’re going to work at a place that feels like that, but with that mission of helping employees thrive that just seems like it could be a game changer.
Sue (40:55):
Right. That again, that’s kind of the infinite mindset. Yeah. You hear a lot about zero burnout being the goal, and I think that’s so shortsighted. Again, that’s finite mindset. Yeah. So we can get to zero burnout, who cares? You know, what, what does that really accomplish? Do we know that that helps people to, to really be able to meet their full potential? You know? Right. It’s, it’s part of it, but it’s not the entirety of it.
Monica (41:23):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think if people are thriving at the workplace, it’s gonna have this ripple effect because then when they go home, they’re not gonna be cranky and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> short with their kids and their husband and just, and their neighbors and their community and it just, it ripples out if you’re, if you’re thriving and you know, really feeling like you’re doing well in the workplace.
Sue (41:48):
Right, right.
Monica (41:51):
Awesome. Well, what is one kind of key takeaway from our discussion that you wanna make sure our listeners leave with from today? I know we’ve covered a lot of ground, but
Sue (42:05):
I’d like to circle back to trying to challenge people to make wellbeing the goal. Yeah. Whatever that looks like. And as part of wellbeing being the goal is to start with yourself.
Monica (42:24):
Yeah. I love that. It seems so simple, but like you said, a lot of us are, are saying that message, but then living it is a whole other thing. So if we can really prioritize our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of our organizations, we’re really gonna create a shift out there.
Sue (42:40):
Definitely.
Monica (42:42):
So where can our listeners find you? Do you have organizational website or social media or anything like that that I can share in the show notes?
Sue (42:54):
The IUS website, we, we have. Okay. But Perfect. And I can send that to you. I am on Twitter. My Twitter handle is at @SusanHingle. Okay. And then I’m on Facebook and Instagram at @SusanThompsonHingle.
Monica (43:20):
Okay. Awesome. I’m a Twitter user too from, from the early days and I’ve been using it more lately as well. So I’ll have to connect with you there too.
Sue (43:29):
Yeah, definitely. I’d love to.
Monica (43:31):
Awesome, Sue. Well, thank you. Yeah.
Sue (43:32):
That was how, that was how I met Gabe was through Twitter.
Monica (43:35):
Yeah. He’s done an amazing job of connecting kind of like-minded physicians that are, are trying to create a more human-centric healthcare system and yeah. One where we can all thrive, so,
Sue (43:51):
Yeah.
Monica (43:51):
Yeah. Good work. Awesome, Sue. Well thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it and I know our listeners will enjoy it too. So
Sue (44:01):
Thank you so much for having me, and again, thanks for doing this important work yourself.
Monica (44:07):
Thank you.
