Speaker: Kate Saunders, Director of Clinical Nutrition, UMass Memorial Medical Center
Please introduce yourself and what your main responsibilities are:
Kate Saunders: I'm kate Saunders and I'm the director of clinical nutrition at UMass Memorial Medical Center. My primary responsibility is the oversight of the clinical nutrition team here, and this includes a group of over 30 registered dietitians and support staff. We all work directly with patients and other members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team.
What problems were you trying to solve by partnering with Arbinger?
Kate Saunders: I was introduced to Arbinger when I was already a few years into a management role here at UMass and I didn't immediately identify what types of challenges and problems I needed to solve per se, but I did really appreciate through learning the outward mindset concepts that I spent a lot of time working through situations where things weren't, you know, going right often to circle back to them again and again without seeing much improvement. So this could be, you know, implementing a new process on boarding an employee or working with an existing one or partnering with another team around a collaborative initiative. And when I first read the outward mindset,
How did partnering with Arbinger help to address these problems?
Kate Saunders: I would say that partnering with Arbinger really created 180° shift in my approach where I was curious and alive to others around me to recognize what had previously been unsuccessful or failed to create the same change in work I was doing. And I think the most valuable insight I gained was the self awareness and and I still feel that that's true.
Kate Saunders: where, you know, prior to Arbinger, I would find myself down rabbit holes that led to some pretty destructive exchanges based on my own self focus. I now at least have the insight to recognize that. And I say at least because it's not always in real time, sometimes it's upon reflection and can invite others to consider, to explore the same reflection in themselves, you know, as a leader, I think it's essential to be able to say, hey, I really messed this up or I'm struggling with this, but I think I can do better because your team is looking for you to set that tone and I consider this to be one of the key responsibilities of my job
What other benefits have you seen from this partnership?
Kate Saunders: So in terms of other benefits, you know, where where do I start? Team engagement? A feeling both internally within our department and externally across the hospital that not only do we belong, but we better understand how we can directly contribute to positive patient outcomes through individual conversations, but also through systemic change.
