You still believe in me

I still believe in you. And you still believe in me.

And this truth prevails in all matters. It is the comfort after disaster. It the resolve after a team loss. It is the constitution as another year of team sacrifice begins.

It is the reassurance found when personal journeys become unbalanced.

This truth prevails as we experience interdependent trust in one another. As we disappoint and get disappointed. As we hurt and get hurt. We see it in work, in friends, and even in romantic love.

Perhaps two share a romantic love that’s for some time, not for all time. Throughout the reshaping of being in love with one another to loving one another on a new level, we still believe in one another.

Perhaps two share a love that is for all time. Throughout years of roadblocks, unsettling silent evenings and sparked moments, we get back to being in love. Because we still believe in one another.

Even in spiritually, we can still believe. We struggle with grace, the unknown, traditional and personal faith conflict. Even after years and years of struggle, we may find internal reflection, inner connection has found its way.

And we love our friends, always, through hurt and through happiness. And we still believe in one another.

I still believe in you, and you still believe in me.

This interdependent conviction remains true in our health. The collective public is invested in the healthcare industry. We have to be invested in healthcare. It means our lives. And because we are all in, we must share this conviction.

Conviction in healthcare can get wearisome. It can get stale. Energy of healthcare advocacy, systems, policy and caring can drift toward hopelessness.

Enter patience and tolerance, two virtues we inevitably grow and gain. This is exactly how we balance, improve and become our best selves. Professionally and personally.

Remaining steadfast and emotionally invested in healthcare is like any other relationship conviction. Similar to a romantic love now human love. Similar to a romantic love of all time. Like that of a spiritual foundation. Resemblant of a friendship. Like new inter-industry hearts that inevitably intertwine. We connect, we disagree, we need space, we get excited, we get disappointed.

And then, we still believe. With patience and tolerance.

I still believe in you and you still believe in me.

With patience.

Be very aware at how patient we have been with one another. Transforming patience in healthcare requires acceptance, perseverance and assertive communication.

1. We still believe, though healthcare can be slow and sticky. It may take 10 years from the time a drug is discovered until trials are completed. It may take 17 years from the time a best practice is published until it is adopted by healthcare industries. It takes years to get through patent processes, to get through regulation, to get through hospital acquisitions or new building regulations. It takes years to train and education and develop healthcare professionals. Our bodies take years to recover or relearn alongside disease. Personally, we’ve all been waiting for cures and better treatments. We understand what it means to be patient. Professionally, we’re asked to believe and wait out the time taken to get it right. We have to accept that some aspects of safety and regulation must remain as part of the public good. Yet, we have to accept that some things are unacceptable. It shouldn’t take publication and 17 years to change healthcare delivery. Best processes should be required. Time to healthcare practice adoption should be estimated, prioritized and measured. Time from study to publication should reported. Time to drug discovery and timelag improvements should be scored globally. These measures are not difficult and the public can hold collective healthcare accountable. Acceptance of necessary pauses and acceptance in transforming unacceptable healthcare inefficiency is part of how we still believe in one another.
2. We still believe, because of and through perseverance. As a global body, we are really good at supporting medical charity and encouraging the future. We need model this in policy and in global harmony as well. For everything from global regulations to pharmaceutical access accountability. For every presentation, from global credentialing harmony to global grades in publication. We must have the perseverance to require and model improvement. Improvement and global movement is how we walk the walk when we say “I still believe in you, and you still believe in me” and this is done, in part, with patience.
3. We still believe, which is why we speak up. And assertive communication must be part of all healthcare agenda. Despite the positive morale boosting move, it is not enough for a hospital to place employees on an advisory board. It is not enough for medical doctors to include nursing at the decision table, or for patients to be part of patient symposiums. While important, these moves also communicate that our industry can take care of itself. That’s not true. Our industry is everyone’s industry. And therefore all other industries should have a seat at the table. Let transportation and energy speak up for healthcare. Let our media and communication professionals speak up, and to, the public. Let our storytellers transform understanding. Let our financial experts improve efficiency with personalized healthcare reimbursement. Let our venture capitalists love us, even as they are overwhelmed by the bureaucratic time delay. Let them in, dialogue with our fellow man and cherish their assertive communication.

With Tolerance

Try, every day, to practice tolerance for healthcare systems. Transformation of tolerance requires inter-industry respect, realistic understanding of failure and sincerity for our fellow man. 

1. Most if not all people grow in endurance due to health. We want cures and they don’t appear. We want better treatments and clinical trials fail. We want better healthcare delivery and then politics worsens policies. Personally, we get it. Professionally, though, many industries are mismatched. It may take 10 years from the time a drug is discovered until trials are completed. It may take 17 years from the time a best practice is published until it is adopted by healthcare industries. It takes years to get through patent processes, to get through regulation, to get through hospital acquisitions or new building regulations. It takes years to train and education and develop healthcare professionals. Other industries create, design, scale and are hailed as heroes in a fraction of that time. Sometimes it only takes 15 months between startups, entrepreneurs and capital funding. And everyone’s exciting. And everyone in the entrepreneurial/venture capital realm is giving speeches and telling stories and presented all over magazine covers. Step into healthcare, and these same entrepreneurs find they've just landed on an unfamiliar island. Slow movement gets frustrating. And suddenly annoying. And then, before you know it, a whole new world just got really maddening. Respect other industries by acknowledging the differences upfront. Healthcare can learn not only from lean management and automation. Healthcare can learn from the human hearts in other industries. It’s important to educate and subsequently learn time strategies from engineers. It’s acceptable to bring in financial experts to minimize timelags in medicine finance systems. It’s okay to remind startup board members with extensive portfolios that, because healthcare directly affects the public, unsafe shortcuts are not welcomed. It's okay to encourage these board members that smart and safe new process ideas are welcomed. It’s important to remind and let venture capital experience the long haul. (And anyway, a long haul journey with venture capitalists will create a memorable shared life story, a bond like no other). Tolerance is bearing the inevitable in healthcare while reshaping the inevitable efficiently and safely. Tolerance is respecting that healthcare is a public industry, and the public comes first. With this respect, future creation and innovation can be planned and funded accordingly. And with this tolerance, we still believe….and love...one another.

2. Tolerance in healthcare systems requires a realistic approach to failure. It is important to acknowledge failure, grow from it, sure. Yet it’s also important to avoid failure when possible. And both are equally critical. Failures and poor approaches in medical research designs, publication processes, outdated education syllabi, biomedical regulation and access policies must addressed. Allowing them to continue cannot and should not be excused later on as “leadership learning”. We know better on many aspects of healthcare improvement. The reality is that if we do not implement many of these, we are allowing a failure that is costly to the public. It’s not a failure that should be spun as a learning curve. It is a failure that is simply one we are accountable to, and it should be avoided. Revise quality measures that are evidence based, revamp regulation to be global harmony, require standardized credentials worldwide, require quality metrics in medical research enterprises, insist on medical research that transcends silos and reimburse accordingly. Continuing a failure is exactly what it is, nothing more. We still believe in accountability. And we still believe we can realistically advance from failure without delay.

3. The majority of our interest in health and medicine is derived from a genuine and innate heart for our fellow man. We still believe that medicine will find solutions to end suffering. We still believe in one another to advance these accomplishments. We still know that optimism and hope and sheer determination get us there. We know that one another will make mistakes and so we have to be genuine in our forgiveness of ourselves and especially in our forgiveness of one another. It is important to be honest, sincere and genuine in our love for our fellow man. It is not weak. It is not dramatic. It is not lofty and it is not idealistic. Our fellow man matters most. People matter most. The genuine heart crosses all borders and all countries. Let translation services improve publication interpretation, physician training across seas, global policy alignment and international regulation harmony. Let cross culture education transform indigenous health and culturally appropriate care. Let political conflict be set aside for healthcare delivery and stop settling for less with international conflict management. Healthcare is a global team. We still believe in one another, and it is this sincere love that will see us through.

With patience and with tolerance, I still believe in you. And you still believe in me.

At times, healthcare improvement is best outlined in bullet points, percentages and specific policy statements paving the way. Sometimes evidence provides the path for healthcare agenda or medical research improvement advocacy. Often interventions highlight moves toward global change in medicine. And we can take it.

Sometimes, though, we have to pause in order to travel the future together. We need to reaffirm the character that will get us to where we want to be. Sometimes the best strategies are found by getting back and growing into who we really are.

Patience and tolerance in healthcare, because we want better treatments, we want others to be able to get help when they need it, we want cures. Because we do not want others to suffer and we will make the future better for them.

Patience and tolerance. We reaffirm it, we realize it, we improve it and we improve ourselves. And we still believe in one another.

With patience and tolerance, we still believe in those we were in love with for some time, who we love now and always on a different level.

With patience and tolerance, we still believe in new others who we will be in love for all time.

With patience and tolerance, and unconditional forgiveness, we love each other as humans and friends.

With patience and tolerance, we will continue to transform healthcare for the world.

Patience and tolerance.

Because I still believe in you.

And you still believe in me.