Moral Matters

Our season wraps up with Simon and Wendy discussing the whole experience of producing the 8 seasons of Moral Matters. We highlight excerpts from just a few of the amazing conversations we've had over the last four years: Jeremy Muller, Joe Crane, Blake Alkire, Rosemary Batt, Thom Mayer, Adam Beckman, Walter O'Donnell, L. Robert Burns, Ilana Yurkiewicz, and Luke Messac. We close with a teaser from...

Today we're looking back to one of our favorite conversations from season 1 with Dr. Don Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Dr. Berwick is a long-time advocate for improving healthcare for both patients and providers. During this conversation, we talk about the moral imperative of change in healthcare; how we can approach the challenges more...

This week’s episode is a look back at a conversation from our very first season, amid the complexities of Covid19, and stands as a stunning example of how administrators and physicians can come together to ensure the well-being of their staff, patients, and community, even during a global pandemic. Ed Tufaro, SVP of Operations at the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, and his team prioritized placing...

Today we are revisiting a conversation from Season 6 Episode 2 with Adam Beckman, former Special Advisor to the US Surgeon General. He and Dr. David Chokshi, former New York City Health Commissioner, called on hospitals to end five administrative practices that harm patients in their October 2022 article in JAMA Health Forum. In our conversation, we dove deep into that article, and talked about wa...

Is organizing a solution to moral injury? Joe Crane has been a union organizer for two decades. When we spoke with him in 2021, Joe was the national organizer for the Doctors Council. He has since moved to UPAD.  Joe walks us through the basic steps of organizing, what it can achieve, and how long it might take. CME: https://earnc.me/byuINF More information about the Doctors Council: https://docto...

Understanding human development is an important part of leadership. In this conversation from Season 3, Dr. Will Torrey, then interim chair of psychiatry at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center(he is now the chair), talks about helping people find their full selves, whether in clinical care, leadership, research or education, and how to channel your outrage toward change. CME: https://earnc.me/7yXlM...

What we choose to measure can distort our organizations, impact our workforce, and hijack our attention and resources. Jerry Muller, professor emeritus of history at the Catholic University of America and the author of The Tyranny of Metrics, describes how that happens then offers a way to create metrics that matter. CME link: https://earnc.me/1s88Dd   Twitter: @WDeanMD, @simontalbotmd, @fixmorali...

The US went from small scale, local healthcare institutions to multibillion dollar megaproviders in barely a generation. Lawton R. Burns, MBA shares his perspective on how it happened, what the true costs are, and what we all can do about it. Big Med: Big Med   Seemed Like a Good Idea: Seemed Like a Good Idea   If I Betray These Words: If I Betray These Words   To support the podcast: Get Started...

Rosemary Batt is the Alice Hanson Cook Professor of Women and Work at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell University and a Professor in Human Resource Studies and International and Comparative Labor. Her research focuses on comparative international studies of management and employment relations, with particular attention to the impact of financialization on management and employment...

In this episode, we look back at a conversation from Season 1 with Richard Lacquement, Dean of the US War College, about the idea of professionalism in the military and how that relates to some of the struggles in professionalism in healthcare. Do us a favor? Let us know the tiniest bit about you, and who you want to hear from, so we can better plan future seasons: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9...

Welcome to Season 8 of Moral Matters! Today, we begin the new season by celebrating the 1-year anniversary of the release of our book If I Betray These Words. And we are going to do that by looking back and revisiting both episodes in which Wendy and Simon discuss the journey and their respective experiences which led to the making of the book. Do us a favor? Let us know the tiniest bit about you,...

Here’s a quick recap of Season 7, in which Wendy, Simon and Kimmy discuss the variety of guests we spoke with this season and how Season 8 will look back at the fabulous guests we've spoken with over the past three years. Do us a favor? Let us know the tiniest bit about you, and who you want to hear from, so we can better plan future seasons: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9SBSMMF To support the p...

Today's episode, with Dr. Candice Chen, is about a new framework for health worker and first responder distress developed by the Workplace Change Collaborative through a federal grant. The WCC, which includes George Washington University, Moral Injury of Healthcare, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the American Federation of Teachers union, thought it was critical to expand the work o...

On this episode, we’re talking about debt collection in American medicine. Lightly paraphrasing today’s guest: ‘The source of much disillusion in medicine is the fundamental tension between the widely held ideals and aims of medical care and the market fundamentalism that dominates American life, which leaves those of us who work in health care with a gnawing sense that we are being drawn away fro...

We are super excited to share a brand new podcast, with our very own Wendy Dean cohosting with Matt Ramsey, MD. 43cc is an honest, fun, irreverent, <occasionally profane> and deadly serious podcast that exposes the truth about healthcare (with a shot to dull the pain). In this cross feed, we give you their very first episode. Be sure to like and follow at the links below. Cheers! ‌ More abou...

This week on Moral Matters, we’re sharing another episode from Searching for Medicine’s Soul. In this episode, Dr. Rothstein talks with Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, a senior contributing editor at Kaiser Health News, former New York Times reporter and New York Times best selling author of American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. Drs. Rothstein and Rosenthal t...

Artificial intelligence is shifting how we communicate in every sector. We talk with journalist Carey Goldberg and physician informaticist Isaac Kohane about their book, The AI Revolution in Medicine: Chat GPT-4 and Beyond, and the promise and perils of the technology in healthcare. Support the podcast:  https://www.fixmoralinjury.org/get-started Link to book: https://a.co/d/imMMCLY Twitter - @fix...

Leah Houston, MD practiced emergency medicine for nearly ten years - in 11 different health systems and 3 different states. But credentialing challenges and losing control of her professional identity drove her to build one potential solution. She hopes HPEC will put physicians back in control of their professional credentials. For more information about HPEC: hpec.io Support the podcast: www.fixm...

Elena Perea, MD is a psychiatry residency director and practicing psychiatrist in Asheville, NC. We talk about mental health care in the wake of the worst of the pandemic; the specter of physician suicide; how she decided to change the focus of her work; and how she thinks about guiding the next generation of physicians, today and in the future. Support the podcast: Get Started — Fix Moral Injury...

Ilana Yurkiewicz is a primary care internist and oncologist who recently published a very personal book about the perils of our unintentionally fragmented health care systems. She talks about her journey to this work, and how we all - patients and clinicians - can help reduce the gaps in our medical stories. Link to Fragmented: https://a.co/d/0Qy6As1 To support the podcast: https://www.fixmoralinj...

Healthcare has become increasingly consolidated and corporatized over the past few decades and Danielle Ofri has written eloquently about its impact on the practice of medicine. In this episode, shared by Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron Rothstein talks with Dr. Ofri about the challenges to the relationship between doctor and patient: administrative creep in the medical field, nonprofit hospit...

Alexandra Robbins is the author of the book, “The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession.” It’s a great look at the reality of America’s teachers: what’s working, what’s not, and how we can fix it. It might give us some ideas for healthcare, too. We are grateful to the Reach Out and Read podcast for letting us share this episode with you For more information about...

Trauma is shockingly common. Yet trauma-engendered behaviors are often met with ‘What’s wrong with you?’, when, as Dr. Bruce Perry relates, a better framing is, ‘What happened to you?’. This conversation is especially relevant as the healthcare workforce begins processing our collective trauma from the COVID pandemic. Dr. Perry co-authored a book with Oprah Winfrey that may helps us disentangle tr...

Jason Reynolds is a much-decorated, prolific novelist, poet, and the Library of Congress’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature . This interview with Jason Reynolds is far-ranging and he is deeply honest about himself, and about the power of imagination, literature, and storytelling to allow America’s youth to grow, to strive, and to reverse the ills of racism and beyond. His perspect...

Here’s a quick recap of Season 6 and what’s been happening with Moral Injury of Healthcare’s work. We also introduce a new cohost, Kimmy Pedersen, who will be joining us on occasion beginning in Season 7. Do us a favor? Let us know the tiniest bit about you, and who you want to hear from, so we can better plan future seasons: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9SBSMMF To support the podcast: https://w...