Leading in Turbulent Times: Why Experience is Essential to Healthcare’s Future

Healthcare systems around the world and throughout our community are being buffeted from all sides, with higher acuity patients, a vulnerable and stressed workforce, unsure finances and support structures, and even challenges to long-held medical truths. For as much as we traversed a once in a lifetime moment through the pandemic years, the residual effects and social and political sways that followed have woven their ways into healthcare overall. There is great uncertainty. There are rapidly emerging innovations. There are greater tensions in our society which show up in behaviors that impact how we provide care. These issues and more reflect the turbulent time we find ourselves in as humanity overall, and it hits hard at the heart of healthcare itself. The question we now must ask ourselves is, as healthcare leaders and experience champions, do we relent in the face of the changing tides, or do we dig into the efforts, actions, and intentions we know to be right and true? Leading in turbulent times is about the fundamentals of our human needs, and an experience focus, and purpose, can and will lead us forward.