The Makings of a Marketing Director

No one could ever complain that they don't know how I feel. Take this picture for example. I was probably around five years old, Down the shore in Wildwood. Grandmom had ticked me off for some reason. I feel good looking at this picture. Makes me feel like I was born this way.

Marketing directors use this look a lot. We often need to express our displeasure and having a look that will get one action is important. We are constantly evaluating, sizing things up. At the same time, we have people relentlessly coming at us--selling, complaining, wanting more, better, faster. No wonder we're all in a bad mood.

The challenge of being in my line of work at a place like Lourdes is that they expect associates (i.e., employees) to provide a level of courtesy that exceeds your average job. Some days it is really hard. This is actually the hardest part of my job. I used to have my own business and we would fire customers we didn't like. Can't do that here. And when you have vendors or salespeople who are eating up your time, its nearly impossible. People who work near me can attest to that.

So it is a bit of a tightrope--trying to be nice, or at least professional--when people are getting on your last nerve.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Just not the story you think.

Pictured here is WXPN Musician On Call Volunteer Guide Trainer Extraordinaire, Kimberly Massengill, and one-third of the South Jersey band Showin' Tell, Nicolino. While the picture shows Kim doing her best Gene Simmons imitation, in homage to Nicolino's KISS tattoo, there really is so much more here than meets the eye.

In April, WXPN Musicians On Call launched at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center -- the only hospital in all of New Jersey to participate in this program that brings live music to the patient's bedside. At the launch April 18, we were thrilled to have New York Artist Kenli Mattus and our very own "Born at Lourdes" Birdie Busch. Both serenaded staff and guests and then went out to visit patients on our Rehab floor. Honestly, I never saw people so happy in a hospital before.

That event was where I first met Kim and learned she has trained all of the Musicians On Call guides. Since then, and for the last several weeks, she has taken the Amtrak down from New York to help train Lourdes volunteers as well. These individuals take time out of their lives to spend a few hours in the hospital, helping the musicians navigate the delicate social (and sometimes emotional) interactions that occur when you walk into a perfect stranger's hospital room. You never know what you will get. People are stressed, hurting, anxious. The guides need to be resilient people. Kim clearly has seen it all and is a great teacher.

I hung around these past few weeks to be sure no one got lost, but mostly got to stand back in awe and watch Kim do her thing. Through her I got to observe what true Southern hospitality is. Our guides are fantastic as well. We are very lucky.

I can't tell you how much this program has meant to the hospital. People have been touched by the time the volunteer guides and musicians have taken to be somewhere they could clearly have choosen not to be. I've watched from the hall as volunteer musicians make people smile when just a few minutes before they looked pretty stressed. I've watched patients and families listen together from an adjoining room, tapping their feet in silence and nodding their heads. The night this photo was taken, Showin' Tell played on our maternity floor. This was pretty exciting stuff. No one in the history of the Musician On Call program had played for a maternity unit before and everyone was pretty happy. One family had just welcomed a new baby and, as die-hard XPN fans, they were thrilled to learn they were getting a Musicians On Call performance. It was a nice celebration for them.

All of this is just the kind of transforming, healing experience we try to be a Lourdes. And we are grateful.

Thinking Out of the Box

I've kind of boxed myself in with taking such a narrow angle on this blog--wanting to write exclusively about the blog and our "journey." It is kind of giving me writer's block--mainly because I've been neglecting the blog myself and haven't had time to rally the troops (the other bloggers) or go out and get additional ones. Dr. Miller suggested we get together again, especially since we had such a successful initial meeting, and also because it will help us to form a bit of a writer's group. But events (and in marketing it is literally events) have gotten in the way. We had a well attended heart month event with Dr. Mimi Guarneri from Scripps at the Enterprise Center on February 6 and just yesterday, our Health Careers Day at the Moorestown Mall. Among the activities we offered--besides an up close view of our Da Vinci robot--was a chance for kids to play dress up as doctors and nurses. Check out Josh's little girl, at right.

It also didn't help my schedule that I chose this time to enter Yoga Teacher Training at the Lourdes Institute of Wholistic Studies, but I credit my time taking those classes with keeping my cool. Plus, there is nothing like immersing yourself in another part of an organization to see things from a whole new perspective--and to learn things you didn't know. For instance, I found out we provide yoga therapy to cardiac patients. That is pretty cool.

And the other thing that we all do, which takes time since I'm not stationed at the hosptial, is patient rounding. I can imagine this is not everyone's cup of tea, and some days I'm not up for it, but I am committed to it. Patient rounding is when associates go visit patients. (We have assigned rooms.) We do this as a check on our customer service and patient care, and to try to bridge some gaps that may occur. Even when I'm not feeling up for it, I always find it to be interesting, and often I meet great people. Usually people are quite happy with the service; sometimes they aren't, or just need some help but a particular issue or concern. Sometimes they just need to talk. I had a nice conversation with a man the other day about our mutual dislike for "Mcmansions" and the over-development of land. The other week I met with a man who did not speak English. The enviornmental services associate. Carmen, translated for me and we could tell something was up. He said the care was fine but that he was feeling a 'little down." I asked if he would want a visit from pastoral care and he said he would. Turned out they had visited him earlier but had not realized he had been transferred to a different floor.

So, always lots to do, but just like patient rounding, we are committed to the blog. For now, at least, it will just evolve a bit slower than we would like.

Grass Not Greener in NJ/Blog #4

Friday we had our quarterly leadership development institute. It is sort of a retreat day where we focus on a particular topic or issue. This one was a reflection of last year's accomplishments and next year's goals, but the day began with a presentation of a report, the result of a effort by the New Jersey Hospital Association to obtain an independent and objective analysis (a "warts and all" review) of the state of New Jersey's hospitals. They chose Accenture, which I think did a great job.


Before I worked at Lourdes, I worked for a hospital trade association and I've seen a lot of reports. Some can be self-serving, but this one is quite good because it demonstates that everyone needs to try harder in order to make real improvements in the in the delivery of care.

Up until now, I've spent my healthcare career in Pennsylvania. When I started at Lourdes last year, I could tell that the regulatory environment was much different, and in particular the organization of physicians and their relationships with hospitals. The Accenture presentation helped to clarify those differences and to point out how public policy, government programs and compensatory behavior conspire to create circumstances that impact hospitals, and more importantly, the patients they serve.

As just one example: New Jersey ranks 33rd in the use of hospice care among Medicare patients in the last stages of life. That means a lot of things. It means patients are probably being overtreated. It can mean that doctors and nurses are failing to have good, honest discussions with families. It means families and patients are not facing reality and demanding that "everything be done" when in fact the compassionate and decent thing would be to make sure the patient is provided as many dignified and pain-free last days as possible.

A summary of the report can be found at: http://www.njha.com/publications/HCNJ/HCNJV15No6.pdf

Back to Reality: Blog/Blog 3

Looks like the holidays took a bit of a toll on our blog. If everyone else has been like me, the new year started out busy and hasn't let up. And it doesn't look like it is easing up any time soon. Lots to do. The March issue of our Physician's Practice Magazine supplement had to get done and we were running late. We needed to get the ad out for our first heart month event, and two presentations, not the least of which the big "Our Blog Test Kitchen" talk at the "Using the New Web 2.0 for Corporate Communications" seminar at Philadelphia University.http://www.prwebfire.com/

Personally, I had a great time and learned a lot. It was also very inspiring. Great company all around. Met some nice people from our friends at Fox Chase and got to see our buddies from Main Line Health. Also present, Mr. Al Paul Lefton, President of one of Philadelphia's premier advertising agencies. I had to tell him how much I respected him as a result of a Philadelphia Business Journal profile a few years back. In it, he talked about how their agency does not participate in awards contests. I can't tell you what a refreshing move that is, especially these days. All of those agency awards are a big scam. It's like kindergarten where everybody winds up with a prize. You pay to enter and are pretty much guaranteed something when you leave at the end of the dinner. Plus, the award winners are not required to demonstrate any ROI for the client. Don't get me started.

Christopher Barger from IBM gave a terrific keynote, with lots of content and good examples, including a mention that some of IBM's 250 bloggers are focused exclusively on healthcare. I checked it out and will be linking some of them, and their links, very soon. IBM has quite a vision as to how blogging fits into the corporate structure, and it was good to hear him end his talk with some tips on when not to blog--which was kind of where I was headed with my presentation. One of his points was not to blog if you don't have a goal in mind.

In preparing my talk, I was thinking about the reasons we became involved in this project, and one of them was that it allowed us to provide a new media outlet to reflect the mission and values of this organization.

The conference offered lots of value-added information. I feel lucky to have been there and that we were given this opportunity. For those who missed what I had to say, here's the cribnote version what I said. I explained:

1. How we got involved


2. Why we got involved (one of them--it was a way for us to reflect our values and mission through new media)


3. The process we used to gain buy in and get it rolling


4. And yeah, we're glad we did it.

I finally figured out how to link files (hooray), and at the conference I got a good explanation of the whole RSS feed thing, so I promise next post I'll add some content.

Also learned one other thing. We need to keep this more regular, so I need to check in with our bloggers. And I think it is time to perhaps search for a few more to lighten the load.

Tiny Babies

Think of that large bottle of water you guzzle while working out in the gym or that big dictionary you used as a kid. Now think of a newborn baby that weighs less than that -- and survives.

Never seen babies that small? I have, many times in the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden. The 25-bed ICN is equipped to care for babies that are born at less than 32 weeks gestation and who weigh less than 1,500 grams. The dedicated neonatologists and specialized nurses care for 400 babies annually in the ICN.

Obviously, babies stay in the ICN for weeks or months. They reside in incubators until they're big and strong enough to be transferred to other units, and later go home.

On Friday, Dec. 8, the ICN staff brought Christmas to 25 babies who couldn’t go home for the holidays during its 18th Annual Christmas Party. The babies were dressed in their Christmas finery for their first photos with Santa Claus, who took time out from his busy schedule to pay a visit to Lourdes. Family members attended as well and posed with Santa.

Santa also paid a special visit to Bryaisha Simpson, now 2 ½ years old. At 12 ounces, she was the smallest baby to be born and survive at Lourdes.

The entire scene was one of the most touching I've ever experienced. I count myself lucky to have a child who was born 7 pounds, 8 ounces, and didn't have to go through what these babies and their families do in this unit.

The photo above was from the event. Also, check out the link for a slide show from the Philadelphia Inquirer. The unit is always accepting donations of baby blankets, hats and other items. Let me know if you'd like to donate.

Nothin' Left To Lose

Nothin’ Left To Lose*

Imagine feeling so trapped and scared as a young man in 1968 that you enlist to go to Vietnam because you feel your chance of living is better there than on the street in front of your home? One wintry morning in 1978, I met such a man in an encounter that shattered the arrogance of my youth.

The two of us sat there in that cold and unfriendly room, part of a veterans’ psychiatric hospital 30 miles outside of Philadelphia. We sat there, face to face: one white, one black. There were similarities between the two of us. He was 28, I was 22. He was from West Philadelphia. I was from Northwest Philadelphia. He remembered Ritchie Allen, a Phillie who routinely rocketed homeruns out of Connie Mack Stadium. And so did I.

But it is the contrast that gnaws at me. I was the doctor. He was the patient. My father was a prominent surgeon who, to this very day, I idolize as my greatest role model in life. He only remembered seeing his father twice. He dropped out of high school at the end of 10th grade. I graduated from an exclusive prep school.

In the fall of 1968 , as a boy of 12, I loved to watch the Dallas Cowboys. In the fall of 1968, as a boy of 18, he enlisted to go to Vietnam to avoid being shot and killed by a rival gang on the streets of West Philadelphia.

The session was meant to be one in which a young doctor polished his interviewing skills by speaking with a patient dealing with mental illness. The hospital was filled with Vietnam veterans, so all 20 of my other medical school classmates were also conducting their own interviews on that day. The young man opened up “I enlisted to go to Vietnam because I thought my chances of living would be better there than on the streets of West Philadelphia with the gangs. I knew that I had made a mistake when the plane was flying me into Vietnam and I saw all the bombs going off in the distance.”

He was quiet and very sensitive. His voice quivered and his words were somewhat guarded, all so consistent with his story of violated youth. On this day, the doctor had no words of wisdom. On this day the doctor did the learning.

Today, I am a physician in an urban health center. I have carried his words with me across 28 years in time. They have never gone far from me. Periodically I have thought of him, although his name I have long forgotten. He taught me great humility on that day and I hope that I have carried that humility to the bedside of every patient for whom it has ever been my privilege to care. I now remember him as one of my greatest teachers in medical school.

I sit here in my office in Camden, New Jersey. It is on one of the top floors of the medical center and from it I can see far across the Delaware River where I have a clear panoramic view of the City of Philadelphia. Through the eyes of a now 50-year-old man, I see off in the distance that city’s tallest building, Liberty Place. It stretches proudly into the night sky, a well-lit beacon symbolizing the spirit of man reaching to new height. And its name reminds us all of a declaration in support of independence from fear and need so bravely articulated 230 years ago. With the advent of this New Year, so many of us celebrate the wonderful blessings that freedom in America has made possible. I am one of them.

But as I look out my window I do see an expanse of low-income, and even abandoned, housing that unfolds before me. I see Camden, a city known for its poverty and crime. And, in the distance, the City of Brotherly Love which was plagued with nearly 400 homicides in this year. I think of 47 million uninsured Americans struggling in a land of plenty. And I think of the similarities between the Iraq War and Vietnam.

As I look off towards Liberty Place, I think of my teacher and what he taught me that day. We hear so much about freedom these days. In this Holiday Season 2006 there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who will be in far off lands away from family for the cause of freedom.

For a moment I look out my window and think back to the fall of 1968. I see a young black man in the streets of West Philadelphia and he is tired and scared, trapped in a jungle of youth violence and poverty. He makes a decision to go to Vietnam in search of a better life? Perhaps Janis Joplin sung it best: “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”*

Beautiful Sunsets,

Strawberry Fields


*From “Me and Bobby McGee”- sung by Janis Joplin, 1971; written by Kris Kristofferson

My Beautiful Mind

It’s 7:40 a.m. and I am driving south on Haddonfield Road. As I pass the Cherry Hill Mall, I get caught by two red lights, despite the fact that the mall is closed and there is no cross traffic whatsoever. So there is a line of cars sitting, idling, wasting gas, for absolutely no reason except that for some reason we do not have the money to fund an intelligent traffic control system. However, we do have the money to burn gasoline while uselessly idling.

Multiply this by millions of traffic lights in this country, and you get an idea of the amount of gas we waste every day. The irony is, addressing this by improving traffic flow would hardly be a painful solution. On the contrary, it would make everyone’s commute faster. Seems like a win-win situation, especially in view of the fact that dependence on foreign oil is hardly a good thing, right?

The problem is … every time I hit these lights I repeat this same argument in my head. And despite how forcefully or brilliantly I argue the point to myself (I try to keep my lips from moving while I am in the car) the light steadfastly refuses to turn green any time sooner.

It has taken 53 years for this fact of life to sink in. Most of the running commentary in my mind is useless. Now I can certainly write my representative, my local newspaper, or join a conservation group, and take some action. But most of the energy I spend grousing over this matter is purely wasted.

So why don’t I do these things, take some action, but when I am not in control of my immediate situation, learn how to just let it go?

Sometimes when I am in traffic, I picture a long line of ants doing … well … whatever it is ants do. And I picture one of those ants grousing about how slow the ant in front of him is, and why are they building this ant hill anyway, and did you see how that one ant cut him off. The image is so absurd. How self-important that ant is, considering how powerless he is. Of course, I am that ant. That image always brings a smile to my face and I relax.

It all comes down to the serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Studying Studies

One of the tasks I do often here is read about medical studies. Have you read the latest medical study released in the news today? If you haven’t, don’t worry. Another contradictory one will be out momentarily.

The problem I’ve found with most medical studies I read about is that they deal with specific drugs or devices treating (or not) such a small number of people with a specific condition, you’re not quite sure what to make of the results. Another study of the same drug looking at a slightly different condition could come up with the opposite result. Therefore, within a short period of time, you could have contradictory headlines: “X drug Reduces Cancer Risk” and “X drug Does Nothing for Cancer.”
Which study do you believe? Your guess is as good as mine. Go with doctors (affiliated with major health systems like Lourdes) and treatments you believe will work and hope for the best.

Not so Jaded

As a journalist for 10 years, I reported on just about everything. I got to see and talk to people at their best, but more often, at their worst: following the deaths of loved ones or through some other tragedy; during heated exchanges at a school board meeting over some passionate issue; or when they read something in the paper they didn’t exactly like.

I talked to family members of loved ones who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks who remained in denial, thinking those missing individuals would walk through the door again in a few moments. I even visited Ground Zero in New York two weeks after the attack, getting closer than most reporters, inside a building next door, picking up business cards and other personal effects blown in from God knows where.

Over the years, I think I got pretty jaded. I thought I’d seen it all. That’s until I joined Lourdes as writer/editor of publications in October 2005. One of my duties is interviewing department leaders for features in the Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center weekly newsletter. I was interviewing the nurse manager of Critical Care I, a unit where the sickest of the sick people go, when a “code” was announced. Just like on medical TV shows like “ER,” that’s a signal for everyone to drop what they’re doing and proceed to a patient’s room to respond to an emergency situation.

The nurse manager and I got up, but shortly thereafter, the code was canceled. That’s not totally uncommon, I was told; the situation was probably under control. We concluded our interview and we walked toward the exit of the unit. There, outside a room, I quickly found out why the code had been called off. A family was gathered, and a woman was sobbing uncontrollably, crying, “Mommy! Mommy!” She collapsed onto the floor, and two relatives tried to pick her up and escort her out of the unit and into a waiting room. Her elderly mother had apparently just died. I discovered that the woman was in kidney failure, and was quite ill.

The scene hit me like a ton of bricks. I could totally put myself in that grieving woman’s situation. I have elderly relatives. In fact, most of my larger family gatherings are for funerals.

Because the code had been canceled, no chaplain was present. I quickly left the unit and walked through the Chapel and into the Pastoral Care Department. I told the secretary that someone was needed in CC1.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that incident for weeks. It still brings back memories and sad feelings. I never knew the deceased woman’s name, and I’m sure the nurses and others who work in such hospital units don’t recall everyone who comes there. However, I admire their courage for dealing with life and death situations every day.