We can’t believe these past two weeks have passed so quickly!
Today we had a final meeting with our host to review our impressions of the hospital and the CNM role. On our way to the meeting, we were surprised by a (literal) bump in the road… which turned into a flat tire in the hired car. The photo below is our meeting prep session on the side of the highway in Hyderabad. We were pretty impressed at our improvisational skills and commitment to getting the job done, even if it means collecting agenda items with rickshaw honks blaring in the background!
Road-side Team Meeting!
When we spoke with our host, we let him know that we saw a lot of differences between the style each CNM uses when she approaches her job. Some spend most of the day in delivery rooms and tending to active clinical situations. Others focus more on administrative tasks or outpatient customer interaction.
Some of this is by design – the CNM role oversees both clinical and administrative tasks, as well as sales and customer interaction depending on the needs of the day. However, we felt that the CNMs would benefit from some direction from the LifeSpring leadership to guide their prioritization among these varied tasks. We suggested they create a vision-level document to complement the current documents that outline the tactical portions of the role.
Overall, we were also really impressed by the CNMs we observed. Prior to arrival we hypothesized that gender would play a larger role in managing the hospital or managing issues with the customers or their family members. However, we were consistently impressed at the CNMs ability to assert themselves, solve problems and manage teams.
We think that the hospital made a good decision to promote nurses into hospital management roles and that the Nurse Manager is a promising career progression for high-potential nurses in the LifeSpring organization.
It’s been a great experience on-site, and we can’t wait to get back to the States to dig into the data and compile our final recommendations for LifeSpring. Next stop – Boston!