With Paul Levy’s guidance, we spoke a lot today about the concept and art of negotiating, and even got to practice our skills at negotiating our best deals. I enjoyed the discussion about the types of negotiating and thinking about whether our goal is to “claim value” or “create value.” During the discussion, someone in the group briefly brought up how to reconcile the concepts of negotiation from today with the idea of Shared Decision Making that was more heavily discussed yesterday. I can see the similarities and benefits of including the ideas of negotiating, most especially “creating value,” to those of Shared Decision Making.

In Paul’s talk, he said that when creating value, we should ask our counterpart not only “What’s your position?” but “What’s behind your position?” We should learn about the other person’s interests, actively listen, and “build workable packages.” We should not think of the options… Continue reading →

Today I was struck by the discussion on moving away from the “Blame and Shame” culture and moving towards a culture of transparency, reporting, and improvement for prevention of errors. I appreciated the examples given on how much more valuable it can be to look into an event and learn from it rather than focus on assigning fault and punitive measures. This can also help to avoid having a “second victim” who is harmed in medical errors – the provider.

I thought back to yesterday’s “Teeter Totter” game. The last group that volunteered to play had nearly all of their members on the teeter totter, but then when Brady stepped on the teeter totter tipped and the ‘patients’ were lost. I remember thinking that I bet he felt guilty; they were so close! But when we were debriefing from the game, that is not what I heard at all. I… Continue reading →