AXIOM Insights Podcast – Workforce Learning in Healthcare

Scott Rutherford
Hello and welcome to the AXIOM Insights Learning & Development Podcast. I’m Scott Rutherford. This podcast series explores topics around driving organizational performance through learning and today we’re focusing on workforce education in healthcare.

And I couldn’t be happier to have three industry experts with me to talk about that. I’ll introduce you each very briefly. But if you could tell me a little bit more about your background Hillary Miller you’re the president or vice president and chief learning officer at PennState Health. Tell me a little about your role.

Hillary Miller
Sure, it’s an inaugural role that didn’t exist before in a growing health care system and so I have key responsibilities for leaning leading learning strategy. Workforce development and organizational development consulting. So, it’s a real pleasure and honor to be here. Thank you.

Scott Rutherford
Thank you, Hillary. Geoffrey Roche, you’re the Director of Workforce Development, North America, at Siemens Healthineers, and I should note, I believe you’re the co-host of Holistic Leadership, The Future of Work in Education podcast. So, nice to have another podcaster on. Tell me a little about your role at Siemens Healthineers.

Geoffrey Roche
Yeah, thank you Scott and and obviously wonderful to be here with you and and with Hillary and Dr Mitchell as well. Obviously my role at Siemens, like Hillary, is also inaugural. It’s really to think about how do we partner with hospitals and healthcare systems around learning and development and how do we build the next sustainable health care workforce.

Scott Rutherford
Geoffrey, great, it’s great to have you on. Dr. Lamata Michell is Chief Learning Officer at AdventHealth and, I looked it up because I wasn’t familiar with your organization, and as far as I was able to find out, I know you’re a nonprofit health care system in Florida with 92,000 employees, is that right?

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
Yes, actually we’re at 93,000 as I speak. Yes, so we keep growing so my role is similar to Hillary’s.

Scott Rutherford
Wow. So what’s your — describe your role and how long have you been there.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
Like hers, it’s a new role for the organization. So as a Chief Learning Officer, I oversee learning strategy and learning opportunities for the 93,000 team members that we have and it’s really, it comes out of the strategic plan of wanting AdventHealth to become a dynamic learning community.

Scott Rutherford
Wonderful. Well so let me start off the the conversation fairly broadly because my understanding is — I don’t work in healthcare, I work in learning and development and I have have for for some years but um, my experience with the healthcare industry is primarily as a consumer. But I think everybody who who has been who has lived through the past five years is aware of the pressures that the healthcare sector and the industry have faced. So my understanding is if we were to put ourselves back in a 2019 “pre-COVID” mindset is that there were some pressures on workforce and staffing in healthcare that were unique to the sector even before COVID. And so I was wondering if we could have a conversation about, what’s been the experience of living through the pandemic period and perhaps the additional pressures — at least that’s my perception — that it put on healthcare staffing, and how have you experienced the past four or five years? How is today’s situation different than where we, I hate to say ‘started off’, but where we were before the pandemic.

Hillary Miller
I have a lot to offer on this and I’m sure my colleagues do here too. You know for me and you can pull up research that highlights this to in healthcare. These were things that have we’ve known. We’ve known that we were going to have workforce shortages.

We knew that higher Ed institutions you know if we don’t have enough faculty to teach the members because these are highly credentialed roles, oftentimes, which requires you know clinical internships and then you have your more entry level roles which are critical like a medical assistant. That that relieve the administrative Burden off of your higher credentialed individuals. All very very important and so when I think about you know what happened with the pandemic It put a magnifying glass on a problem that was already there.

And then on top of it. It stress tested every industry. I mean Healthcare was not the only recipient of that and put us almost into like a war zone type situation where you know folks are are not.. We’re not equipped for volumes of that magnitude. The severity of the situation. The mental health impact. And we learned so many things from that in a really really hard way but in my mind these problems were already things that we knew.

I mean we had statistics already telling us that in rural and rural health centers, Internal medicine was going to have a severe shortage in 2030 and so these were things that were known. It is more of what our organization’s doing to react to that now because these pipelines take time to fill and so you have to start that work now knowing that this is a potential in the future.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
I’d agree with Hillary about the research as the pandemic was happening I was still in higher education I had not joined this health care company at that point and what we saw from that perspective was the effect of the birth dearth. So we have fewer coming into those programs they would look at it and they would evaluate the program based on the length of time it would take them to get their qualifications and get to you know, get turned off by that but we realized in higher education that we did not do a good job of sitting at the table with the employers to talk about this problem that was in front of us. We went up into our silos thinking that we had the answer to the question and then you know did not bring it back to the to the employers.

Now that I’m in healthcare, I joined this organization in 2022, what we’re seeing is the burnout. We’re seeing that the pipeline is not as robust as we thought it was because we didn’t take into equation the decline in enrollment in these programs, so not having sufficient people coming out qualified to step into this role, but we also didn’t put into place a robust support system to help with the burnout of those that were on the front lines during the pandemic and are still at the front lines post-pandemic.

Scott Rutherford
Right. And, Geoffrey?

Geoffrey Roche
Yeah, you know it’s really interesting. One of the best phrases that I’ve heard from a colleague about a year ago to describe health care was we don’t have pathways in health care. We literally have shoots and ladders and you know these two individuals here have been. Ah, true pioneers in the work that they’ve led at their health care systems to change that. But but we don’t have that systemically across the board Scott right? I mean you know I come to this as as the son of a community college graduate, son of a nurse. I got into a healthcare system at a young age grew and had leaders that mentored and coached me into becoming the leader that I am today.

That story is not real for a lot of people in healthcare and it pains me when I say that because it’s the true authentic reality. But what we have to really think about is how do we change that. And I think when we look at learning and development, what’s clear is that, systems that intentionally and authentically invest in a chief learning officer and a learning and development team and give them the resources that are critical — that’s the key. They’ve got to embed resources there and they’ve got to leverage them as a trusted learning advisor. Meaning instead of being transactional. Let them be transformational.

You will see a change. I think healthcare and obviously you know Hillary and Dr Mitchell can can give their thoughts on this, I think healthcare is an industry that’s been a bit slower than other industries and really leveraging that and so it’s incredibly important. For all the executives that will hear this discussion that they actually invest in these areas. It will not just help people. It will change lives when done correctly.

Scott Rutherford
And the you’re talking about making an investment and you know I I don’t want to treat the workforce in healthcare monolithically I realize that we probably need to break it down into at least a few subsectors but when you’re talking about physicians you know nursing professionals people who require a lot of education and training to take those roles. The the path is long. Many years. And I think everyone’s familiar with that. So so how do you manage the forecast shortages of. Physicians and RNs and Certified Nursing Assistants, and I call them credentialed roles — and I made myself a quick list of just trying to understand who I thought might be in the picture because I think you know I I mean I have visibility to you know there’s the lab technicians but also, HR, Finance, Operations. All the people who keep the lights on in the buildings. Yeah, each one of them am I am I inferring correctly needs a different sort of defined intake pathway and in. And another ladder maybe Goeffrey to use your analogy.

Geoffrey Roche
Yeah I mean obviously this is where also accreditors come in and licensing boards come in and I will say Scott I think health care is the most regulated industry generally across the board and to you know to both Hillary and Dr Mitchell’s point we know what’s required today in most of those cases. There have been certain areas like nursing where they have been successful to actually get accreors to be okay with virtual reality and simulation instead of 100 % clinical placement but in like imaging. For example, if you’re a community college which produce most of our technologist they still have to do 100% clinical placement. Over 1400 hours of in-person clinical placement. But here’s where it gets challenging and Hillary and Dr Mitchell could tell you, clinical placements are so tough to get right now because of the workforce challenges and a whole host of other reasons and so this is really where in my view, academia and healthcare have to come together and they have to go back to the accreditors and to the licensing boards diplomatically and realistically and say hey this is the challenges we’re dealing with today and then go forward, to Hillary’s point about the data, the data is scary. I don’t think anybody should sit there and sugarcoat it. But I think some do still today but 2027 is coming and that’s the that’s ah the true reality and then you have 2030 as Hillary said, but every couple next years we are really in a challenging situation and so I think the only way to address this is through true transformational partnership between industry academia and all the other entities. This is an ecosystem and I think we’ve always faltered when we don’t leverage the ecosystem.

Hillary Miller
That’s a really interesting point and I — there’s a lot of levers. So thinking that there’s this concrete pathway for any one of these roles is just in my mind not a great way to look at it right? it’s.. It’s not this ladder of I’ve got to achieve these activities you have to look at the breadth of transferable skills. So I think about Veteran populations more often than not veterans coming out of service have these transferable skills but because the way historically job descriptions have been written, we have not accounted for that. It has to look like this thing so that being removed. A field medic, perfect entry level into medical assisting and probably very close to being able to move into a nursing could probably do an emt role pretty quickly.

And there are things that you have to do with that but we look at this having to be in the same structure as what we’ve had academically so long and people are thinking. That’s a reduction in quality. It’s an evolution of the skill set. And so in my mind it’s hey you’re not sure you want to work in healthcare yet? Come be a patient care tech part-time. Come work on the revenue cycle side as a coder part-time, as a biller. So one of the bigger things that we forget about it doesn’t matter if you have tuition reimbursement. And an institution. A lot of people cannot afford to pay that upfront and so you have to rethink and reshape the access barriers that are preventing people from going doing that when we go and talk with entry level employees. It’s not that they don’t want to grow they say I don’t think I can do that. Because I financially am having to choose between my light bill and my travel and my child care and so we have not made that easy for people to evolve into those roles. I actually don’t think we have a shortage of people. We have created limitations for access points for them to get into it.

And two, as a healthcare system, I love that you called this out Geoffrey and Scott, is that there are so many other roles that require you know. The the health care system to be able to run and more often than not. We’re always talking about the clinical and clinical is critically important. But if we don’t have folks who are in environmental services. We don’t have folks to keep our patients healthy and safe by keeping things clean. We can’t move somebody from the ED into an inpatient bed because of that. So. There are all these different levers within a health care system that if you don’t think about how all of those things interact and take a look at your geographic region. I mean in a rural healthcare system area like we have, most of our workers outside of the highly highly trained residents and some other folks who’d be moving in to be tied to our academic institutions for training, are from the local area. And so you have to know your markets and your regions to tap into those unique geographic requirements, the funding sources, all of those things. So I don’t see it as a path it is it is multiple levers that you have to show people. This is what this could look like and guess what you get to pick and then let us make sure that we’re removing financial barriers for you to even be able to entry enter into that.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
I think one of the other pieces that’s missing is the opportunity to either upskill or reskill as you said you have someone that’s in one particular area of healthcare but they have the skills that can be developed to step into another role but we don’t make that easily accessible for them and sometimes our approach to the resources for upskiling or reskilling has gone backwards and you have to sit in the classroom. You have to be pulled away from the job that you do, sit in the classroom and then you the individual has got to make the connecting dot between what you’re learning the role that you’re in and how it can take you to the next place, which is outdated to me. So I think that organizations particularly healthcare that have looked at their job descriptions and have zoned in on what are the skills they’re looking for. You’re absolutely right, Hillary, they have found that it isn’t a shortage of people we have the people there. We just need to make it accessible for them to move into the role that their skills align the best with.

Scott Rutherford
And the move toward a focus on ah you know, ah understanding and in a more I think flexible skills assessment doesn’t just affect healthcare. Obviously I think it’s coming to an inflection point from the sound of this discussion, but — I’m physically located in the Philadelphia area and the governor in ah Pennsylvania recently signed legislation which effectively opened up state hiring um, ah beyond people with a bachelor’s degree to allow for some of this skills based hiring. Are those the sort of changes that are needed to to open the door? What are the barriers that you’re seeing to to really embracing a focus on skills within healthcare?

Geoffrey Roche
Scott I can I can give you one and it and it’s a tangible one that I think it it just paints the picture right? Apprenticeships is a great example in healthcare. There’s a movement here in the United States to change the way we currently look at the current system and say why don’t we have an apprenticeship degree? Nothing changes in this, it’s still of highest quality. An individual would work on the job to Hillary’s point they would could work even as a food service worker they could be in a program invested in by the healthcare system to become a technologist to become a phlebotomist and be learning and earning on the job. Now inevitably some of the feedback that people will say well oh the accrediting body’s not going to go for that. They’re not going to go for that. And so that’s the reality right? Here’s the challenge to what Hillary said right. Hillary’s right, you cannot just assume that this is about pathways but the Hillary’s exact model. Why apprenticeships are important is you can bring more equity into the system when somebody actually has a job and is not having to pay for that expensive education. Dr. Mitchell came from the community college sector. But the reality of it is is there are still people who want to enter health care today but they can’t even afford a community college and in the structure today unless we’re going to provide support for them. They will never be able to become part of our organizations because they have to get licensed. They have to first get that degree. They then have to get licensed and so why not provide that on the job learn on the job model that’s different I know it sounds different but other industries have done it very very well and I think we can in healthcare too.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah, and then that’s not just a healthcare barrier I’ll share a little of my experience which may be relevant here because for a number of years I was with the continuing education unit at the University of California, Irvine , in certificate programs. So what they call non credot bearing certificate programs. Typically these are learning programs that are used for folks who are looking to move up in ah in a particular career path or to change career path but the the challenge that I faced in that role and I think that a lot of ah fee-based learning still faces for the for the for the learner. Is the uncertainty and and I think that Jeffrey this kind of gets to where you’re going where you know am I going to be able to justify putting time and money toward learning whether you know a skills based certificate. Whatever that looks like um without some assurance that that I’m going to earn more. Or earn something to pay it off.

Hillary Miller
And so something that’s really fascinating to me industry agnostic is goes back to your original comment when we were talking about investment or expense. There’s fiscal expenses with this. There is hard green dollars right? that people are looking at and it’s we have to reshape that number one because we have historically just not looked at all the other things that impact somebody’s life. We’ve we for such a long time because this is from the industrial area era.

And most companies are still very much structured that way of I give you a job. You owe me your loyalty. It has to look like this and you know not to the fault of any organizations but that’s where the pandemic kind of rushed ordered some of the stuff that should have been managed much much earlier, but it kind of forced a great lens and view on this in the way we’re all operating. And nobody has a playbook for this by the way that’s where companies get some grace because we all kind of got chucked into it health care predominantly because we’re talking about life and death situations. But when you’re thinking about people in general, it’s an evolution and it’s that.

You have to have some level of risk to be able to make change and so it’s stress testing where are we okay to take this risk but also companies are are really hurting right now, right? There’s a lot more choice for patients. Awesome. Much harder for Healthcare Systems. You’re seeing a combination now in mergers and acquisitions of a lot of Healthcare systems because they simply cannot survive on their own because the competition is so fierce. So what I’m hoping for just as ah, a learning leader. Is that we start to see yes, we understand we’re in competition in the marketplace and there is a business model and a revenue cycle around this, but that if we started competing together, we have enough people in our populations to fill all of our roles. And we are looking at that I mean I’m looking for more collaborative efforts and councils that are saying hey we all have the same problem. Recognizing that I need to be able to fill this. But if we’re working against each other. We’re actually making it harder for the people that we’re actually trying to get into these job roles. And it’s just reshaping the thinking completely.

The other thing that I’m incredibly passionate about is that there’s a lot of great government things that we should be doing legislatively, and that’s where the advocacy of roles like what we all have. That’s where I’m spending my time, is in the legislation because that’s the thing that’s going to allow for the funding and we’re using the funding to be a barrier rather than piloting and testing things. So we know we can’t solve for this overnight but stress test. Try some things out, be okay with having a certain threshold for risk, to see what’s going to work for your organization and.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
I like that idea of failing forward I think the other challenge too though is sometimes helping others see that learning is not just a function but is a value and it adds value. You know learning is always regarded as that cost centers money going out. Can’t show the ROI. But when you have got an organization of people who have taken the autonomy for their own learning and they’re engaged in critical thinking and then they become problem solvers. And they become partners as to how can we look at this thing in front of us as an opportunity to grow and change rather than an obstacle. Hillary I like your idea about thinking on the legislative part. What what do we need to share with them so they understand the importance of this and that I that stress testing that that resonates with me.

Scott Rutherford
Well, it’s it’s engaging also and this gets Geoffrey, the phrease you used, “trusted learning advisor,” which I interviewed Dr. Keith Keating, the author of the book of that title for a previous episode of the podcast. But in the context of this discussion, I think, Hillary, this gets I think to the picture you were trying to describe when we’re talking about learning in the context of the future state of an organization and an industry.

back to Jeffrey the phrase you used which I know. Ah well you use the phrase trusted learning advisor which I interviewed Dr Keith Keating the author of the book of that entitl for a previous episode of this podcast. But. In the context of this discussion I think you know in in Hillary this this this I think gets to of the picture you may have been trying to to describe which is when we’re talking about learning in the context of the future state of an organization in an industry.

We have to have executive level voice and buy in and and and and build trust that we are — we, learning — are are a a strategic lever in the future of the industry and this the future of the institution. So not just a cost center. But. But but but actually an advantage builder. Are you a is that something that that that we think is going. We’re going to see more of that is that an opportunity for learning in this moment.

Hillary Miller
It has to be. I don’t think we have a choice so you know it is something where oftentimes we hear this seat at the table and I don’t even get involved in all all of that I think it is presenting that in a way where it’s sharing sharing the story one ah of learning but learning for so long and, industry agnostic, was seen as a product. It has products but the value is the relationship and connection to what are we trying to do in this organization to move forward strategically. People engagement. Retention of our high performers. Well-being.

The model has shifted. Well-being was way down the list for a long time and now it’s in the top three as it should be. DEI keeps bouncing back and forth and in my mind that’s not a pillar that is should be a part of the fabric of how we’re even approaching anything that we’re doing and we keep separating out.

Rather than seeing it as it’s a triad approach of we actually can’t do these things if we’re not working in sync and I think the other thing that’s really interesting to me is it’s really easy to go after the really shiny objects that are out there. We’re in a 24 hour on world. There’s a lot of products. There’s a lot of tools. I don’t care I could care less about the tools from the standpoint of if you do not have a solid foundation and you do not have core tenets and principles built, whether that’s in a learning structure or an operational, you really can’t get good at those advanced things until you have consistency in some of the basic things, and learning is one of those where it’s not like a chief nursing officer where holistically you go, oh I know what, they’re responsible for those roles have been around for a long time learning I bet if I picked up 15 organizations the titles the work. How people view it the expectations around that radically different that has what is hurt our industry because people have homegrown those to be whatever the organization needs and it’s hurt the standard. And there’s a lot of good standards there that have been around for a minute. It’s whether or not you have leadership that helps to adopt that

And I think the other thing before I hand it over to my colleagues is there’s an even bigger thing was shifting the mindset with people who serve in people, leadership roles, succession planning. Identifying one person and grooming them for five years is not reality and so you have to look at this as talent pools and how strong is our bench strength and have we created opportunity but on the flip side just because we hand somebody an opportunity, does not mean they’re automatically awarded. They have to invest equally back into that and so you have this constant tension of I need to be able to provide opportunities and an organization. But the individual who’s opting into that also has to be invested.

Geoffrey Roche
Yeah I think Scott I’ll tell a brief story that I think speaks to this. When I was a people leader in my former healthcare system I had a colleague that reported to me who you know had come to me at some point and she said you know I really think I want to be a nurse. And I’ll never forget this story because um I said to her. OK, I said hold on one second I picked up the phone and I called the cath lab manager and I said hey John I’m sitting here with Christie and Christie is going to come on over. Can you give her a chance to just observe the team. For a couple minutes. He said absolutely. I sent Christie over and and the story is you know Christie went on to become a cath lab nurse my colleagues some of my colleagues including some executives at the organization said to me, you know you just encouraged someone to take on a position and you’re going to lose the position in your area now because we’re not going to backfill that position. And I said to them at that time I don’t care because I’m helping her fulfill her purpose and her passion and I’m okay with that. And we didn’t get the back filled position and I didn’t care. Um, and I made sure that I took on that additional work. Not that anyone else on the team took it on but I knew that it would be a benefit to her. She’s still serving as a nurse today serving across the country. She was a travel nurse during COVID she’s now settled down in a health care system and she has found her absolute passion and her purpose and when I look back on that story I was a small part of it but helped her achieve it but we need to have leaders that are more committed than ever to thinking like that in my opinion. This is truly a time for people focused leaders in health care and I think obviously you know Hillary and Dr Mitchell are anomalies in my opinion within the work that they do. We need more of them when you see more of them. You will see true career mobility and you will also see a transformational generation of the workforce.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
You know I agree with both of you a couple of months ago 1 of the ladies in the cafeteria asked if I had a moment just to speak and so I stepped out of line and she told me about this dream she had of. Becoming a nurse but wasn’t able to pursue it because of finances etc and I said well why? why are you talking in past tense what happened? She said it’s too late too late.

It’s never too late. In fact I said to you never stop learning until the day you die and so she says well I don’t know where to start and that’s a part of it where people are overwhelmed with the amount of Information. So I sat with her we went through it step by step. She wants to do it part time because she has a family to take care of but just being able to sit with her and help her map out the trajectory of what her career could look like at this organization.

That’s what it’s about. You know and you hand people something and say well you just work you read through it and you work it out and you know make a decision, that’s not helping them at all. So it’s it’s important to have those people within the organization that are willing to take that time. And sit with another person and hear their dream and their passion and help them map out a pathway to fulfilling that dream.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah, we talk sometimes about the challenges of of building organizational culture. Again, this is across all industries. And training managers to be able to have people centric conversations at all levels. I Love these examples because what you’re what you’re telling me is. Is the managers it shows a manager being empowered to have a conversation that might not benefit their team in the short term, but benefits the person that they’re working with. Call it a servant leadership perspective or whatever you want to call it. I think what you’re doing in those moments is you’re building loyalty and a bond and you know a sense of safety and alignment with that person and if you can do that throughout an organization that can be I think very powerful.

Hillary Miller
Scott I would add that happens at the department level more often than not people have this grandiose view of how an organization culture is there. Whether it’s positive or negative culture already exists. But I think people forget sometimes and it’s easy to do this when we talk about our big organizations or a hospital. Culture is how I view my relationship with my manager and my teammates that is very low on the totem pole in the grand scheme of an organization and so when they respond on engagement Surveys How someone feels about an organization is typically how they feel about their department and so you have to help. Yes, you have to help people see this.

Scott Rutherford
Absolutely, That’s the reality. That’s that person’s reality.

Hillary Miller
As as a learning leader, I can help and coach and guide and our teams can help and coach and guide. But you have to take ultimate responsibility and ownership to drive that within your unit. That’s your locus of control where if we have that spread across where every people leader is seen that as this awesome and hard responsibility right? coaching doesn’t come naturally, we often grow into that as we get into leadership and but if we provide those tools and toolkits and tool belts. To say hey here are all the things that you can use and you’re not going to get it right right out of the gate but keep at it and you’ve got support systems to help you on the flip side removing people from those roles where it is not the right fit and we know that so you equally have to have a. Radical candor approach I’ll steal Kim Scott’s terminology there to be able to coach up and coach out because it isn’t for everybody and that isn’t the only way that you can grow.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
Hillary I Think if there was more of that happening we would break down that siloed myopic view of I am not going to help this person find the resources they need because then I’m going to lose them up the team you know. But instead think about not only that individual’s growth, but the value they bring to the organization. So The organization can fulfill its own mission I think is so important if we could do that if we could just break that resistance down but you’re right, it starts at the department level.

Scott Rutherford
Well I want to I think about and and I’ll ask you each from your own perspectives as we sort of close up the the conversation in this — today, to consider well or tell me a little about what you hope to see in your organization in the next two to five years. Given the many challenges we’ve talked about where it where do you hope to lead your teams and what do you think you’ll be able to accomplish and and Dr Lamata, I’ll start with you.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
Okay, all right? Oh my goodness, in two to five years. I hope that we embrace innovation I hope that we see failure as failing forward that we fail quickly.

And I hope that we are more proactive than reactive in terms of looking at what the needs are within healthcare and making sure that employees employees in healthcare. Have the resources they need to continue performing at the height of their role. That’s what I hope for, like yesterday. I know you said in two years but yesterday.

Scott Rutherford
Understood. Geoffrey?

Geoffrey Roche
Yeah, the first I would say is it’s true. My true hope is that we’ll see more human centered leaders and human centered decisions in healthcare and that when it comes to workforce will really be invested in our people. And their hopes and desires and that through that we will get our desires as organizations also fulfilled. And I think part of that would be, we will redesign the workforce. We will really make sure that it is an equitable approach into it. We’ll look at accreditation. We’ll look at licensure. We’ll make sure, to Hillary’s point, that we can actually bring people into the workforce who have a heart and desire to serve but who can’t get in today because of a licensure or accreditation. But that with them in there. We’ll have a stronger more healthy sustainable workforce that will continue to enable exceptional patient care in rural suburban and urban communities.

Scott Rutherford
Excellent. And Hillary I think the last word might go to you.

Hillary Miller
What a great group to follow on this. Oh my gosh, so I second all of that. Um, and I would add that it is about focusing on alignment. So often we have to have consensus to do everything. No get alignment on the ultimate goal. And then be okay with disagreement on how we get there that sometimes is so preventative in some of the work that we do

The second piece I would leave with is grace. It doesn’t matter how seasoned you are things are are shapeshifting so quickly that nobody knows how to figure this out. So if we’re working collectively together with alignment on a shared goal regardless of what service area you’re in. It is amazing how much gets done because the people side of the house is often the biggest barrier. Because we don’t communicate or we have missed you know misalignment in what we’re thinking. So Those are the things that outside of the actual work that needs to be done, needs to happen in addition to that or it’ll stall progress.

Scott Rutherford
Hillary Miller at PennState Health, Geoffrey Roche at Siemens Healthineers and Dr. Lamata Mitchell at AdventHealth. Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed this conversation and I wish you all the best as you take on everything the industry throws at you moving forward.

Dr. Lamata Mitchell
Thank you.

Hillary Miller
Thank you.

Geoffrey Roche
Thank you Scott, thank you all.

Scott Rutherford
This has been the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development podcast. This podcast is a production of AXIOM Learning Solutions. AXIOM is a learning and development services firm, with a network of learning professionals in the U.S. and worldwide, supporting L&D teams with learning staff augmentation and project support for instructional design, content management, content creation and more, including training delivery and facilitation, both in-person and virtually. To learn more about how AXIOM can help you and your team achieve your learning goals, visit axiomlearningsolutions.com

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