“Great Dad in Bed _____” Description

Project Description

The Challenge: Healthcare professionals in many locations are experiencing high levels of burnout causing many to leave their jobs. The causes of burnout are multifactorial but include moral distress, a sense of futility in the care of people dying of terminal chronic disease, and a sense of frustration in caring for individuals with behavioral health and substance dependency disorders.

The Intervention: Participating organizations will commit that, for (initially) at least a single bed in a hospital unit, newly admitted patients (or their families/healthcare proxy) will, in addition to all usual admission processes, be asked the question: “In order to provide you (your family member) with the best care possible, what three non-medical facts should your health care team know about you (them)?” The response to this question will be displayed somewhere in the room- via a dedicated whiteboard, via a poster board, or other methods TBD. This is the front-end part of “Great Dad.” At the time that the patient leaves that room, improved or not, alive or not, available members of the healthcare team will huddle in the room and remind each other what they learned about that patient as a person, from the responses to the above question and through any other methods (artifacts, stories, etc.) that may have occurred during that person’s stay in the unit. This is the back-end part of “Great Dad.”

Prior to participating in “Great Dad” all likely participating clinicians will play the conversation game Hello together for 30 minutes. The above question is derived from Hello and as part of the 30 minute gameplay experience players will respond to that question for themselves.

Outcomes: We will measure moral distress and comfort initiating conversations about goals of care among participants pre/post. We anticipate improvements in each of these domains.

This intervention was developed at a design session associated with the End Well Symposium in San Francisco in December 2017.
If interested contact Jeff Cohn MD, Medical Director of Common Practice at jeff@commonpractice.com