Each month, Look Who’s Talking features voices from across BWH answering the same question. This month, BWHers share their thoughts on how their work reflects high-quality patient care; clinical excellence; innovations in professional practice; and interprofessional collaboration. Learn more about BWH’s Magnet journey on PikeNotes.

For the last four years, I’ve been a participant in the multidisciplinary General Medicine Service Redesign team (covering about 90 beds at BWH). This team includes nurse directors, operation supervisors, nurse educators, physician assistants, physicians, social workers, and patient family advisors. We meet twice monthly to review our current performance and talk about new initiatives to improve both the quality of the care we deliver to our patients and the support we offer our teams. We all bring a unique perspective to the challenge at hand. Further, we work together to integrate those viewpoints into a more effective approach based on relationship building and resiliency. We are more unified when everyone has a voice to highlight areas of risk and opportunity, and by working this way it truly feels like we are in it together.

Matthew P. Vitale, MD, Hospitalist, Department of Medicine

The African Women’s Health Center was the first center to provide holistic care to women who have undergone female genital cutting. The reason this center has been thriving since its origination 18 years ago is because of the integrated approach we take with our patients. We initially examined the crucial facets of providing cultural and linguistic competence to this marginalized population, and we continue to reevaluate our approach from staff education to active engagement and feedback from our patients. Our team of nurses, medical assistants and social workers help provide a welcoming environment to our immensely diverse population of immigrant and refugee patients. Without the collaboration of our team, our patients would not feel that the African Women’s Health Center is their haven.

Nawal M. Nour, MD, MPH, Director, Global Ob/Gyn and African Women’s Health Center; Director, Ambulatory Obstetrics; Director, Office for Multicultural Careers

The Brigham Way to a Magnet Hospital is exemplified by the culture of developing transformational teams of excellence. We constantly strive, as a unified team, to find unique solutions to critical problems –  Brigham Health’s leading edge of collaboration is seen each day in the steps we take to discover ways of maintaining health through precision medicine or through the complex teamwork required in repairing and restoring broken organs using artificial heart transplants.

Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, FACC, FESC, FHFSA, FRCP, Medical Director, BWH Heart and Vascular Center

Our team works hard to incorporate new technology that can help improve patient care. We are using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs, now incorporated directly in Epic) to help provide our patients with high-quality, evidence-based care. We are focused on continually innovating to provide patients with the best outcomes possible.

Muriel J. Solberg, Research Assistant, Department of Orthopaedics

BWH is in the process of installing a 7T MRI scanner in the Building for Transformational Medicine (BTM). Our Department of Neurology and multiple sclerosis (MS) program are very excited for the collaborations ahead with the BWH Radiology Department to apply this advanced tool for the investigation of MS and, ultimately, for clinical care. For MS, the benefits of the 7T device will likely include a more accurate diagnosis and an improved ability to monitor treatment response. For diagnosis of the disease, the 7T will allow the detection of the central vein sign to help determine if the patient’s lesions are due to multiple sclerosis. The 7T also has unique sensitivity to cortical lesions, spinal cord involvement and leptomeningeal enhancement, which may be key to identifying patients who are experiencing disease progression and may need their therapy changed. In these ways, the 7T reflects our commitment to the Magnet ideals, and, once approved for clinical use, will give us a new way to offer the highest-quality care to our patients.

Rohit Bakshi, MD, MA, Director of Laboratory Neuroimaging Research, Department of Neurology

The patients at my clinic speak several languages and are culturally diverse. In order to better serve them, I onboard staff that can speak their same languages and are familiar with social determinants of health. By doing this, we can provide a high quality experience for all the patients that walk through the front door.

Masiel Ortiz RN, MJ, Department of Medicine