Last Friday afternoon, I bought a new lunchbox and safely placed in it my freshly made turkey sandwich. I also dusted off my scrubs and stethoscope that I had exchanged for a suit and tie nearly ten years ago. The following morning, with my new lunchbox and nursing necessities in hand, I walked through the doors of a hospital and began my first shift as a house supervisor.

Reflecting on that weekend, I remember my alarm clock blaring like a siren at 5am on both Saturday and Sunday morning, on the same weekend that the NFL playoffs started – I barely saw a football snap. You may be rolling your eyes right now but this fact nearly brings me to tears. I made it to work before the sun rose and left after the sun set. I saw the sun Friday evening and didn’t see it again until Monday morning. In almost a decade this is the first time I have officially worked a full weekend (and got paid for it, anyway – thanks a lot, salary), and my feet and SportsCenter painfully reminded me.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.

I’m so excited for this incredible opportunity. I’m buried in patient flow operations of a major metropolitan hospital for twelve hours per day. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, I can’t argue that, but when I got home the first evening, sore from head to toe due to the stress of (at times, literally) running through the hospital, helping staff and patients, planning staffing, and managing patient flow, my mind was excitingly running a mile a minute. I threw my new lunchbox on the counter and ran to my poor wife. For hours, she was stuck listening to me try to make sense as I rambled on and on, barely completing a sentence before moving to the next. Bless her soul – she stayed intently focused the entire time. The gist of what I told her is that the patient flow opportunities are real. The ramifications of poorly coordinated flow are detrimental to productivity, to efficiency, and to hospital finances. These people just need help and “these people” are the hospital leaders, the clinicians, and the patients they serve.

In my new job, I get to see what healthcare heroes are doing at the frontline. I get to see the staffing challenges that nurses are enduring- what used to be the unthinkable is now the norm. The administrators get it, they aren’t disconnected, and they’re desperately trying to help. Nurses today are taking care of twice the number of patients they had previously cared for, and they’re literally doing it in a heroic fashion. I see the exhaustion in their eyes and simultaneously see the determination in their body language. I see and hear the frustrations of the patients and their families. Everybody is scared.

As my brain continues to run at unreasonable speeds, always at around 2am, I can’t help but to problem solve through process improvement and data analysis. I think to myself, “I wonder if they have a report that shows…..” or “I’ll bet if we implemented XYZ processes, it would make a huge difference for the leaders and staff trying to manage this.” And when I do finally doze off, I dream about the day that our patients get to experience healthcare the way that it should be – flowing seamlessly through an integrated system redesigned to meet their needs, without barriers or delays.

Now when I come home after my shift, the first thing I do is unpack. I quietly unpack my new lunchbox and unpack the experiences I had that day. I unpack what the healthcare systems have endured the last two years; I unpack the opportunities available in process improvement and throughput efficiencies; I unpack how thankful I am to be working alongside our healthcare heroes once again. You see, I took this job so that I would have a full understanding of what it is to be a nurse now, during a pandemic, and ensure their voices will be heard when process improvement decisions are made. I know that we can fix the bottlenecks and be better for the patients we serve, and I’m reminded of this when I reflect on my day’s work while unpacking

my new lunchbox.