A Tribute to Pat Sodomka
by Jim Conway
Pat Sodomka, F.A.C.H.E,. an internationally recognized advocate for patient- and family-centered care, died Feb. 19, 2010. She was 60 years old.
Jim Conway is a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a senior consultant at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
I don’t remember exactly when I first met Pat Sodomka—possibly 1997—but I remember without question the impact of the meeting on me as if it were yesterday. Pat’s warmth and gentleness created a strong presence. As she spoke, she exuded a firm resolve to deliver innovative models of adult patient- and family-centered care (PFCC) and educational program for health professionals in training. In that first meeting she demonstrated both the vision to achieve that aim and an unwavering resolve that this would be, at its heart, the work of patients and family members and those clinicians partnering with them on the front line.
From that meeting I knew Pat was an executive I had to partner with and learn from in hopes of realizing the same goals for the patients and family members and staff of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where I was chief operating officer and a senior vice president. Subsequently I learned of her enormous academic and operational contributions, community service and personal credentials, hidden in the humility of this servant-leader.
In their shared journey since 1993, some of the key strategies used by Pat and the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) to ensure that the concept of partnership with patients and families is embedded in their organizational culture were:
- Defining patient- and family-centered values and using the strategic planning process to advance the development of partnerships with patients and families
- Defining and differentiating behaviors for customer service and patient- and family-centered care and integrating them into the human resources management system
- Integrating partnerships with patients and families in all phases of designing or renovating new facilities.
- Involving patients and families in quality and patient-safety work.
- Creating patient and family faculty programs.
- Creating opportunities for patient and family advisors to serve as research partners.
- Making a commitment to measuring change processes and outcomes related to partnerships with patients and families and patient- and family-centered practice.
Pat had a “bully platform” of influence in academia and hospital administration, and she used it to its fullest to tell the story of her journey and that of her organization and its patients, family members and staff. The focus was on not only learning and great successes but also the missteps. The vehicles she used were exceedingly generous: seeming endless speeches, workshops, video series, journal articles, interviews and more.
When I went to the first AAMC meeting on PFCC, Pat was a keynote speaker, and she galvanized the meeting. It was the same story with Picker, Planetree, AAMC, ACGME, ACHE, UHC and many others—always Pat extending a welcome, facilitating the story, introducing you to Julie, the Medical College of Georgia advisors, and the clinical and administrative staff.
The story was always their story, never about Pat. She was also brilliant at building measurement into the journey when few others were doing so. Ahead of almost everyone, she was able to demonstrate the positive clinical, financial, service and satisfaction outcomes of patient- and family-centered care through UHC and other programs.
In 2004, Pat and MCG were featured in the documentary Patient- and Family-Centered Care: Partnerships for Quality and Safety, produced by the American Hospital Association and the Institute for Family-Centered Care. This documentary was included in a toolkit distributed to the chief executive officer of every hospital in the United States.
In 2006, MCG’s commitment to patient- and family-centered care and partnerships with patients and families was the focus of a one-hour program in the nationally acclaimed series Remaking American Medicine. MCG was recognized as one of the leaders in partnering with patients and families in a 2007 benchmarking study conducted by the University Health System Consortium.
In 2007 and 2008, MCG competed successfully for two prestigious national grants to study patient- and family-centered practice and related partnerships with patients and families.
The results of Pat’s work and that of her team allowed others all over the world to discover the possibilities and “draw courage.” Her organization wasn’t a children’s or a specialty hospital. It was like so many academic and community hospitals in the United States, delivering care to adults as well as children and educating expert clinicians as well as students in training. Under her leadership, this work inspired, showed results, and took away excuses.
For me and so many others, Pat was a colleague, friend, mentor and confidant. Implementing patient- and family-centered care isn’t work for the meek, and a call with her after a struggle or stumble was therapeutic and instructional. Running into her at a meeting made the day better. As her breast cancer journey unfolded, she embraced her friends and supported them. Pat’s death was terribly premature, yet the legacy she leaves is exceptional in her practice as an executive and for all she has left and everyone she has inspired.
Click here for Pat Sodomka’s CV.