Children's Hospitals Today - Spring 2018 - 2

CHECKING IN EDITORʼS NOTE

Finding a focus
Just 15 minutes a day can help bring teams together.

o matter how much you love your
job, Mondays can be rough. It's hard
to get the brain back into work mode after
two days of resting and recharging. Some
Mondays, I feel like a zombie. I sit at my desk
and find I just don't know where to focus. On
Fridays, to give my brain more direction, I've
started leaving myself a detailed to-do list
for the next week. I start at the top of the list
and work my way down. Eventually I find a
rhythm, and before I know it, it's Friday.
While getting yourself organized is important, so is bringing your team together to refocus and get on the same page. During any
given week, the CHA communications team
is working on 70-plus projects that provide
you with information to improve clinical
care and promote patients' well-being. These
projects, including this magazine, are in various stages of the creative process, and they
often have competing deadlines. Some are
in hurry-up-and-wait mode, but all of these
projects require multiple hands on them.
To avoid having a whole team of zombies,
we huddle every Monday to talk about
what's important. This conversation provides transparency and gives us an understanding of where our colleagues' priorities
are for the week. It also helps us problem

Spring 2018 | Vol. 26 No. 2

solve and make sure projects are on track
and on time. We have to keep a consistent
eye on what matters and not get distracted.
These conversations are happening across
CHA: from a company-wide biweekly
huddle to weekly IT, leadership and public
policy huddles, to name a few.
Communications and magazine publishing are not life or death, but for children's
hospitals, patient safety is. That's why Yale
New Haven Children's Hospital, the 2017
Pediatric Quality Award Winner, holds a
daily safety meeting with leaders and frontline staff members (read more about the
hospital's award-winning efforts on page
24). With everyone in the same place, the
15-minute huddle ensures safety issues are
top of mind. The result? The hospital has
gone more than 500 days-and counting-
without a serious safety event.
It's efforts like these that can help you and
your team know you're focused on doing the
right thing. What could be more important?

AMANDA BERTHOLF
magazine@childrenshospitals.org

EDITORIAL STAFF
Managing Editor
Amanda Bertholf
Art Direction and Design
Eric Gapsch
Deanna Yesko
Contributors
Christine Bush
Kelly Church
Darcie Reeson
Matthew Wright
childrenshospitals.org/cht
Ben McClanahan
Natalie Webster
Editorial Advisory Council
Paul Dworkin, M.D.
Rick Majzun, FACHE
Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D., M.B.E.
Kelly Wolfe
Karen Wolfson

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Children's Hospitals Today is published
quarterly by the Childrenʼs Hospital
Association. Copyright 2018. This
magazine may not be reproduced
in whole or in part without the
publisher's written permission.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Children's Hospitals Today - Spring 2018