Connecting with Health Organizations Around the World (Podcast)

Countries around the world have differing approaches to healthcare and nursing. Cleveland Clinic shares its wealth of knowledge through Cleveland Clinic Connected, a global affiliation program that helps international and domestic members enhance patient care, safety and outcomes.

“We’re trying to offer ourselves to other hospitals and health systems to provide guidance … so we can help them drive improvement,” says Margee Pagnucco, MSN, RN, CPHQ, Enterprise Senior Director of Safety, Quality and Patient Experience for Cleveland Clinic Connected. “We are world renowned for our care, and we want to share that with other hospitals that are interested in us.”

In this episode of Cleveland Clinic’s Nurse Essentials podcast, Pagnucco talks about Cleveland Clinic Connected and the role nurses play in its mission. She covers how the team:

• Supports members with nursing assessments, quality metrics, safety event reporting and more
• Strives to respect cultural sensitivity
• Empowers nurses to find their voices and speak up
• Educates members on the role of professional practice models and shared governance
• Addresses challenges of working with hospitals in countries throughout the world

Click the podcast player above to listen to the episode now, or read on for a short, edited excerpt. Check out more Nurse Essentials episodes at my.clevelandclinic.org/podcasts/nurse-essentials or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast excerpt

Podcast host Carol Pehotsky, DNP, RN, NEA-BC: Talk to us a little bit about what you've learned on cultural sensitivity, some of the things that you've had to really think about to acknowledge both those cultures – both the healthcare one as well as where that organization is located.

Pagnucco: The first example that comes to mind is as we were working with one of our international partners on quality metrics and talking about mortality. They said they don't have mortalities. And that was like, "Wait a minute, that can't be. This is a hospital. There can't be people who don't die here." And they said, "Yes, they only die in the ICU." And you know, we were skeptical about that. Why is that? That can't be. But then in further conversation, [we discovered] they don't keep people in the hospital who are at the end of life. They go home to be with their families.

And so it was one of those moments where I had a light bulb moment, like, "Well, just because we do it this way doesn't make it the right way." And wow, isn't that rather heartwarming to think that at the end of your life you're going to go home to be with your family? So, it was just one of those examples where we're like, "Huh, are we trying to impose our Western thoughts and culture on a different culture that may have it better?" It might be a great thing, you know. So, it's just a different way of doing things. That’s one thing.

The hierarchical nature of some of the international relationships is probably the biggest challenge. We're very used to having a voice, speaking up and being bold. And that's not always the case with some of these other countries, where it's just not the expectation. Again, nurses aren't even doing assessments, so there's hesitancy to speak up about things that aren't going well. That's probably the biggest challenge we face in addition to the language issues.