Helping Organizations get “Conversation Ready”

I’ve been working with colleagues at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for the past two years to help healthcare organizations get “Conversation Ready”—to be ready to engage with their patients and clients about end of life care wishes, to be good stewards of that information and to use that information wisely.

The idea is that as more and more people are having The Conversation about end of life wishes, as promoted by The Conversation Project and other initiatives, healthcare organizations need to be prepared with educated staff and effective information systems to respond effectively.

My primary job on the project has been to lead the work on measures, to answer the second question of the Model for Improvement:  How will we know that a change is an improvement?

The measures help guide the tests the organizations have deployed as they learn effective ways to educate themselves and organize work processes and information systems. Our interim report on what we’ve learned has just been published as an IHI White paper, available on the IHI website.

My faculty colleagues and the Conversation Ready organization teams have applied their hearts and minds to caring for people and their loved ones at end of life.

I know I have learned more from them than they have learned from me.