Heart of Safety Coalition Getting to the heart of the matter

  

Caring Greatly podcast

The Caring Greatly podcast is a destination where healthcare leaders and other listeners are inspired to grow, lead, innovate and drive industry transformation. This , interview-style podcast creates space for people to share their perspective and connect to human-centered stories that reveal solutions, spark innovation and provide hope for a safer and brighter future of care.

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Mark Allred, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CHSO

A nurse-security liaison supports safer healthcare environments – Mark Allred, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CHSO

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Mark describes his career journey and what it means to be a liaison between the system’s security team and clinical professionals they help protect. He talks about day-to-day experiences of healthcare professionals as they learn new situational awareness, de-escalation and other skills in response to the national rise in workplace violence. Mark explains the importance of communication between clinical care team members and security professionals to create effective responses to risky or escalating situations in healthcare environments. He emphasizes how a team-based approach to workplace violence prevention helps create higher levels of safety for care team members and the patients and families they serve. And finally, Mark shares how his role fits into the larger workplace violence prevention strategies at Geisinger.

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Sadie Elisseou, MD
04.11.2025

Trauma-informed leadership as a foundation of care team safety and wellbeing – Sadie Elisseou, MD

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Sadie shares the core concepts of trauma-informed leadership and care, including realizing the prevalence of trauma, recognizing its signs and symptoms, responding in a trauma-informed way, and resisting re-traumatization. She talks about how embracing these principles creates safer healthcare experiences for patients and clinicians. She also talks about how to lead people and teams using the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAHMA) six principles of trauma-informed care: 1. Safety: physical, psychological and emotional 2. Trustworthiness and transparency 3. Peer support 4. Collaboration and mutuality 5. Empowerment, voice and choice 6. Cultural, historical and gender issues Sadie also delves into how a trauma-informed approach reframes thinking about “disruptive behavior” in a way that allows for more meaningful solutions and less stress and distress for leaders and team members alike. Finally, Sadie shares a vision for a trauma-informed future where healthcare shifts from a focus on transactions to relationships.

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Molly K. McCarthy, MBA, BSN, RN-NI
03.24.2025

Nursing engagement in technology design and implementation is essential to safety and wellbeing – Molly McCarthy, MBA, RN-BC

In this episode Molly K. McCarthy MBA, BSN, NI-BC, talks about the importance of bridging perspective gaps between clinicians, technologists and business leaders. She describes how engineers need to see clinical workflows first-hand in different care settings to understand real-world applications for technology. In turn, clinicians benefit from directly experiencing software and hardware solution development. This two-way collaboration enables understanding of subtle nuances that make technology successful in the clinical space. Molly goes on to describe how exposing clinicians and engineers to each other’s work early in their respective education creates a shared understanding and vocabulary for solving future challenges. It also paves the way for advancing cultures of respect and collaboration. Finally, Molly outlines a vision for the future in which technology ceases to be a barrier between clinicians and patients and becomes an enhancer of safety and wellbeing for all.

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Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH, PCC
03.05.2025

Strategies to support and retain women physicians – Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH, PCC

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Diane talks about the research exploring why women physicians tend to reduce work hours or leave their profession at higher rates than their male counterparts. The reasons are far more structural and cultural than biological, including differences in expectations and accountability – both on the part of fellow team members and of patients. She shares the underlying data behind this trend that point to fixes that are less about training and conformity and more centered on a shift in healthcare culture that values relationships and connection over transactions. It’s an approach that generally leads to better care outcomes. Diane concludes with her perspective on how structural and policy changes can support the long-term career viability and joy in practice for women physicians and other women clinicians.

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Jennifer K. Clark, MD
02.24.2025

Lessons from palliative care help leaders address team member suffering to support their wellbeing – Jennifer K. Clark, MD

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Jennifer talks about how the core concepts of training from med-peds (internal medicine plus pediatrics) hospice and palliative care have informed her systems thinking and transformation approaches. She shares how palliative care challenges the notion in medicine that death is a failure and what can happen for team member wellbeing when leaders upend that assumption. Jennifer also delves into the thought framework of her new book, Suffer, which looks at the core needs of human beings and the value of suffering. Much of the framework is through the lens of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. While suffering is what happens when core needs go unmet, understanding human suffering helps illuminate the fundamental nature of needs and how they play out for patients and for care team members. Finally, Jennifer helps leaders connect the dots between understanding suffering and the opportunities for empathy, innovation and thriving when team members’ needs for safety, wellbeing and belonging are met.

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Christina Watlington, PhD and Christine McGuire, MSc
01.24.2025

Psychological first aid as a remedy to reduce mental health stigma – Christina Watlington, PhD and Christine McGuire, MSc

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Christina and Christine share the details of the Psychological First Aid (PFA) training they created and launched at ChristianaCare. Their training, which has reached more than 50% of leaders at ChristianaCare, uses an easy-to-remember three-step model of recognizing signs of stress or distress, supporting immediate recovery and referring team members to additional resources provided by ChristianaCare to support team member safety and wellbeing. As a result, the number of referrals to the organization’s Care for the Caregiver program has doubled. Essentially, PFA serves as a culture change mechanism to help reduce the stigma around mental health care. By giving leaders and bedside team members a shared vocabulary around safety and wellbeing, help-seeking behavior is being normalized. It’s also opening new horizons and expanding resources to support more elements of trauma recovery and trauma-informed care and leadership.

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