Dr. Thomas Lee

♪ [music] ♪ I'm Tom Lee. I am a primary care physician and cardiologist. I practice part-time at Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and I'm Chief Medical Officer for Press Ganey. I'm here at the AACC and I've been asked to talk about trust. My organization measures how patients feel and what they're experiencing and I was asked to talk about that and how it's relevant to people who are working in laboratories. Every country in the world, in every part of life, including medicine, we need to deal with that. We can't just roll our eyes about it. It affects vaccine use, it affects everything and we all have to work to rebuild trust and increase it. People have actually given serious thought to trust and there are three basic elements that Frances Frei from Harvard Business School has described. Showing empathy that you really get what people are going through, showing authenticity, demonstrating you care, and then having logic that you have a plan, you can react, you're going to do something about it because good intentions are not enough to earn trust. For laboratory workers, it means more than doing a good job, which is what we've always focused on. It means putting yourself in the place of the person who ultimately benefits from your information. I think the patient is the final customer. So are they going to have more sleepless nights than they need? Are they going to have anxiety that's just not necessary that's preventable? What I'm hoping for moving forward is that we all work together: lab scientists, clinicians, to meet people's needs, show them that we care, show them that we know what we're going through, and then working together to reduce their suffering, to reduce their unnecessary anxiety, to let them have certainty about when they can expect to know something. And then if the plan needs to change, let them know that. I know we can do better. ♪ [music] ♪