Gold Foundation President and CEO Dr. Richard I. Levin during his “Finding Joy and Meaning in the Disrupted Work of Healthcare” Breakout Session on June 18, 2018.
“I urge everyone here, and you to urge everyone else, that if we don’t [promote joy in healthcare], then Star Trek will be right, and instead of humans, we will have algorithms caring for us in a mere couple hundred years. Let’s not do that. This is much more fun.” — Gold Foundation President and CEO Dr. Richard I. Levin at his Breakout Session at the 2018 Cleveland Clinic summit
The Arnold P. Gold Foundation joined other healthcare leaders, patient advocates and patients themselves at the Cleveland Clinic’s annual Patient Experience Summit on Empathy and Innovation on June 18-20, a dynamic annual event designed to spark patient-centered discussions and ways to better the experience of patients. On the conference’s opening day, Gold Foundation President and CEO Dr. Richard I. Levin held a session on “Finding Joy and Meaning in the Disrupted Work of Healthcare.”
The conference featured leaders who presented on an array of topics, including fostering grit in healthcare, as presented by Press Ganey Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tom Lee, and using virtual reality to ease pain, calm nerves and improve health in a drug-free way, as presented by Dr. Brennan Spiegel, Director of Health Services Research for Cedars-Sinai Health System. The event also included poster sessions and social events. The Gold Foundation hosted an exhibitors table throughout the conference to share information about the foundation’s programs and upcoming events.
The Gold Foundation hosted an exhibitors table throughout the conference.
Dr. Levin’s Breakout Session on Engagement/Burnout drew nearly 200 attendees. In “Finding Joy and Meaning in the Disrupted Work of Healthcare,” he addressed the perfect storm of disruption following a 2,500-year-old tradition of caring for the patient. He challenged attendees to think about their own experiences of joy in their work, which led to shared stories that included patient-family interactions and an inspiring story of following in a neighbor’s footsteps to become a physician.
During the summit, Dr. Levin was interviewed on video by Kistein Monkhouse, founder of Patient Orator, in a taping hosted by Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Levin encouraged those seeking to foster humanistic qualities in healthcare to shift the power equation and more fully engage patients in their own care.
Gold Foundation staff members can be found at several other events this year, including Planetree’s 40th Anniversary International Conference On Person-Centered Care, October 7-10 in Boston, and the American Association of American Medical Conference’s Annual Learn Serve Lead Meeting, November 2-6 in Austin, Texas.
