Stephen Beeson, MD, Founder of the Clinician Experience Project at Practicing Excellence, is interviewed on the Mission Matters Innovation Podcast by Adam Torres.
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As a clinician himself, Stephen Beeson realized the way his industry is functioning is hurting his fellow clinicians. He felt a deep conviction to improve the lives of clinicians by helping clinicians be who they aspired to be when they joined this calling. In this interview, he shares his aspirations to help others find a better way and reconnect to their work through a mastery journey. He taps the power of a digital coaching platform , which provides micro-learning to clinicians, teams and leaders to advance skills to connect with patients, collaborate across teams and lead to bring the best of others. .
Beginnings of A Healthcare Innovator
Founding a clinician coaching company was never the plan. Stephen was set as a fulltime family medicine physician with a successful practice. Stephen was then called by the leadership team at his medical group to coach clinicians as part of a group improvement strategy. There he had a chance to coach clinicians and see the impact coaching could create in critical clinician skills most clinicians had never learned. Results were profound both for the organization as they moved from bottom to top decile in patient experience, but also for clinicians as turnover radically dropped among doctors. The impact of coaching ultimately fueled a mission to create coaching for all clinicians, team members and leaders and to figure out a way to bring coaching to everyone in healthcare.
One of the main challenges Stephen faced was scaling coaching across large complex systems with hundreds or thousands of clinicians, sometimes in multiple states. It was time, resource and work intensive to coach in person, and aggregate teams into classrooms. There had to be a better, and more efficient way.
As the Clinician Experience Project was developed, more and more was learned about tapping technology and determining the most effective approaches to coach clinicians using micro-learning app delivery of evidence-derived “tips”. Now with 10 case studies under their belt, a study has been published demonstrating effectiveness of micro-learning coaching on some of the biggest names in healthcare in their member community, the mission of helping clinicians, teams and leaders thrive is truly coming to life.
“There is nothing better than watching a clinician learn and apply a skill with a patient that creates powerful trust and impact, and see what that does for both the patient and clinician…it is the best!” Advancing the skills of clinicians, care teams and leaders using app delivered micro-learning to drive transformative change became the core philosophy of the business.
Watch the full interview:
Tackling Burnout Through Connection, Collaboration and Leadership
As he began his new work, Stephen heard many CEOs and CFOs in the health industry talk about how their clinicians were exhausted, frustrated, and depressed in their work lives due to burnout from work.
According to Stephen, when you look at clinicians who love their clinical life, certain consistencies are apparent. First, they are deeply connected to the patients they care for, and are living in accordance with their belief system as a healer. Second, they have a high performing team they work elbow-to-elbow with who help, support, partner and care about one another with a revitalizing sense of esprit de corps. Third, they have leaders, all the way up to the Board, who listen, respond, value, reduce burden, develop and include their care teams as the most important part of their organization. To have these things manifest we had to create a skill development model for everyone in an organization so connection, collaboration and effective leadership could really happen.
He sought the help of technology to find a way to bring everyone together to learn the same skills, at the same time, asynchronously in minutes, without having to be together. “I think of it as a coach in the pocket!” says Stephen. Use of analytics engines allowed leaders to see who is participating, and a service model to assure skill application has been an important part of the evolution of the Clinician Experience Project. “As we begin work with organizations, we first find out what they want to achieve, then we map the Clinician Experience Project skill-building capabilities to those priorities, and use pre and post success measures to track and verify impact. It is incredibly energizing!” Stephen said.
Turning to a Better Side
Now it is Stephen’s lifelong mission to model, train, and coach clinicians, teams and leaders to thrive in their clinical life.
Microlearning is the way of the future according to Stephen. The Clinician Experience Project model delivers 5 minutes of teaching every week. Every coaching tip that is created is designed to deliver a certain skill to yield benefit for patients, clinicians, teams and organizations.
“Our goal is to have those on the care team each contributing to extraordinary care for patients, and doing so in a way that creates joy, fulfillment and pride in who they are and how they do their work. We are heartbroken by the burnout pandemic, but do believe we have dominion over the very things to make our clinical life everything we hoped for,” shares Stephen.
About
Stephen Beeson, MD, is the Founder of the Clinician Experience Project at Practicing Excellence (www.PracticingExcellence.com). He is also a physician, author, leader, and speaker helping healthcare systems transform The Clinician Experience.
Dr. Beeson’s expertise, along with over 20 distinguished faculty inside the Clinician Experience Project, enables coaching and development of clinicians, teams and leaders to change care delivery. The methods within the Clinician Experience Project tap purpose, collaboration, team intelligence, and a mastery culture that support organizations in pursuit of patient and care team experience, with a healthy culture, prepared to meet the demands of care delivery.
Dr. Beeson and his team can be reached at practicingexcellence.com.
