It's been just over a year since I had the privilege of joining the KNN full time as national director of partnerships, and each day I am thankful to be part of a network pursuing such a transformative mission.
Advancing caring and character toward flourishing—it’s a lofty goal. But we believe that with everyone in the healthcare ecosystem coming together, we can achieve it. To that end, one of the initial charges of my role has been raising awareness of the incredible work that KNN founding member schools are doing and inviting other voices into our work as well.
Over the past year, we have launched several event offerings meant to do just that, including our Mission: TransformMedicine series, which kicked off in late 2021. The goal was to span beyond individuals currently involved in our work and seek additional perspectives from other stakeholders, including health system leaders, scholars, learners and more.
Like medical educators, these groups have an incredibly important role in shifting the culture of medicine, and we want to ensure their viewpoints are included in the KNN’s movement to transform healthcare environments.
In that spirit, we convened three cohorts to wrestle with what they were seeing in their organizational cultures and environments. Where did they see evidence of caring, character and human flourishing? How might we improve both the learning and practice environments?
We were grateful to have Matthew Lee, PhD, of Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program lead off with a presentation on flourishing in healthcare and medicine—which gave participants the grounding to work in small groups and tackle related questions.
So, what did we learn from those sessions? Many common themes emerged, and those areas of interest will guide future convenings.
