Iowa Specialty Hospital

Notes from Steve

January 3, 2022

There’s this movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore called 50 first dates and (spoiler) at the end of the movie she watches a video of how they met every morning because her short-term memory goes away when she sleeps.  Then they live happily ever after.  Every two weeks for the last couple of decades, I re-tell the story of my past 25 years to the new orientation group and review the standards of behavior with the new employees.  It takes 1 hour and 5 minutes.  I’m sort of like Drew re-watching the video every morning to bring her up speed … doing the Iowa Specialty Hospitals and Clinics “story” and the standards of behavior every two weeks brings back the excitement of our journey to me. 

When we re-tell the story of the pandemic -- what will we say?  I know that in the story I tell the new employees there were some real yucky times thrown in amongst the growth and fanfare, but I don’t tell that part of our history … I focus on the good. 

“There was a good part of the pandemic?” 

In the story I tell, my epiphany was understanding what it meant to lead a healthcare organization*.  In the story of Covid, themes such as grace and hard work and overcoming adversity hopefully will rise to the top as opposed to divides in society and limitations.  Personally, I know we all grew in how we each dealt with Covid.  I will look at 2021 as (hopefully) the only full year of a pandemic that I started out with the theme of “anticipation” and ended with the theme of “and” (as in including everyone’s perspective without judgment). 

I’m hoping that love and grace are the themes of the story we tell and re-tell … when we tell the story of the pandemic.

*quality and service and engagement - not just a focus on the numbers

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