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Traveling Town Meeting
As another way to keep various departments up to speed on hospital news and happenings, the hospital has embarked on Traveling Town Meetings. These are mobile versions of the regular Town Meetings held as open forums on a regular basis in the Bornstein Amphitheater. The concept of senior management conducting mini town meetings in specific departments is in response to the results of BWH’s first Staff Survey in 1999.
Much like the dialogue that results from the standard Town Meeting, the traveling meetings offer employees the opportunity to ask senior management about a variety of topics pertaining to their specific department or the hospital as a whole.
Chief Operating Officer Matt Van Vranken is the first member of senior management to begin such meetings. Although his current remarks are focused on the Strategic Plan and the hospital’s new leadership model, he is open to questions that relate to any topic of particular interest to the employees.
Van Vranken began his first string of traveling meetings on Wednesday, January 23 for staff and employees in Ambulatory Obstetrics/Gynecology. “My staff found the discussion Matt led to be refreshingly honest and were quite open to asking questions that were on their mind, particularly on our department’s role in the Strategic Plan,” said Maureen Fagan, RNP/MS, nurse manager, Ambulatory Obstetrics/Gynecology. “In addition to discussing hospital issues, our staff learned more about what BWH’s chief operating officer does on a daily basis.”
Van Vranken is also slated to visit the departments of Human Resources, Finance and Research Administration in February and Development and Public Affairs in March. Other members of senior management will be included in the Traveling Town Meeting circuit in the months ahead.
Directors and managers who would like to host a Traveling Town Meeting in their respective departments are encouraged to email Vin Petrini in Public Affairs.
“Traveling Town Meetings are included on a long list of initiatives designed to respond to employees’ feedback from the Staff Survey. By inviting senior management into individual departments, employees have the opportunity to more directly exchange their ideas regarding topical hospital initiatives and strategies with senior management,” said Cheryl Locke, vice president of Human Resources, who will join Van Vranken and Chief Medical Officer Andy Whittemore, MD, as they present the results of the hospital’s second Staff Survey (conducted in September 2001) at a special Town Meeting scheduled for February 27 in the Bornstein Amphitheater. See the February calendar on page 3 for more details.