Admiration

Chris Boelter, MD

When you talk about high reliability organizations and leadership, you’ve got blunt-end leadership and then sharp-end leadership. Sharp-end is the actual hands-on work, the people who are going to see the effects of a decision that’s made. Blunt-end is where executives are at. And blunt-end leadership is not unimportant, but it is definitely more supportive.

From a pandemic standpoint, my role and the role of my colleagues was to try to help support the needs of the people who are on the sharp end, who are actually doing the work and leading courageously.

When you’re sitting in one of the major health systems in the state of Minnesota, and you’ve got folks who need your services for non-COVID care and you feel like you can’t get them in, or you’re struggling to get them in, or you’re caring for folks where you never thought you would before – that’s moral harm. I mean, it’s very stressful. And I’ll be honest, I developed a great deal of admiration for a number of folks throughout this.

I’d get a phone call from a doc saying, ‘Hey, listen, I have a guy with a stone and I know that they’re likely to need surgery.’ And then I can give some suggestions on how we can manage locally, either outpatient or inpatient, but then also say ‘and tomorrow, I’m going to have my nurse call and we’re going to get this person in for an outpatient treatment.’ It was an incredible level of collaboration.