Key Positions

A spiritual map gives you an idea of physicians that are particularly important for you to develop. These are physician roles that require careful discernment at hiring. It is much easier to hire the right physician than to change the zebra’s stripes. As you create the map it clarifies the points of influence and where to install physicians who model the culture of compassion and mutual care.

Flow of spirituality

With baseline information from the inquiries of the last two posts you can begin to map the flow of spirituality within your medical staff. The exercise will inform your strategies for swinging the medical staff toward a new cultural goal. Some of the basics are these: The bedside care of the patient is the primary goal. Physicians who teach other physicians multiply their influence. Physicians who lead other physicians multiply their influence less strongly than the teachers. Physicians who befriend other physicians are strong influences. One might surmise that higher volume physicians will provide more spiritual care, and this is true unless they become so busy that they omit spiritual care.

New Publication

I'm happy to announce the publication of my new book, "The Physician Champion: Agent for a Compassionate Culture". It is currently available from Amazon. Go to Amazon.

I hope you enjoy it.

Spiritual Report Card

Your hospital probably already has a patient satisfaction survey that patients complete at or near the time of their discharge. Consider adding four questions:
1. While you were in the hospital, did anyone address your spiritual concerns?
2. During your hospitalization, did you feel that a greater power was at work in your healing?
3. Did you experience anything that was an affront to your faith tradition?
4. Would you be willing to speak in more detail about your experiences with a hospital representative?

Opening the Spiritual Dialogue

A few more questions may open the door to spiritual dialogue:

What role does faith play in your work?
How do you differentiate religion and spirituality?
How do you see spirituality in your work?
How do you see spirituality in the work of other physicians?
Are you spiritually nourished at work?
How does spirituality enter the hospital?
Would the hospital look different if its physicians were spiritually mature?
What would you like to see happen within the hospital to improve physician spirituality?
Given time and resources, how could you personally optimize spiritual maturity within the hospital?
What are you planning for the future?
What support would you hope for?
Can you recall stories of a patient’s or a colleague’s spiritual experiences?
What else would you like to talk about?

Some questions to ask

What is a typical day like in your practice?
As you do your work what energizes you?
What depletes you?
When you are depleted, who do you talk to?
What do you do to alleviate stress?
What inspired you to become a physician in the first place?
What parts of the hospital’s mission are most important to you?
What are the top two or three goals that you want to achieve in your practice?
How could the hospital better support you?
How could the hospital better support other physicians?
How could you better support other physicians?

Framing the Conversation

What should you talk about? You want to find out what people are thinking; avoid a monologue on yourself or what you what to accomplish. Ask questions. Ask if you may take notes or record the conversation. Questions sets will be different depending on the role of the person you interview. You might frame the conversation by saying "Our hospital is committed to the provision of holistic care, mind, body, and spirit. I am here today to acquire information that might improve our ability to meet the spiritual needs of physicians here. The purpose is to help me plan programs and opportunities for physicians. Your responses will be confidential, of course."