[soft music]
- It was quite disturbing, to be truthful.
The only thing I do kind of remember
was sitting in my car screaming at the top of my lungs,
beating on the steering wheel
because the cancer was back.
[sighs]
- Here at the Cleveland Clinic,
we're trying to reduce suffering in health care.
There's a quote on the wall in one of our hallways
from one of our founding fathers that says,
"The patient is the most important person in the institution.
It's our job to satisfy them."
That's where we started 100 years ago,
and we're still there, driving that same patient-centered promise.
- Good morning. - Good morning. How are you today?
Good. Nice to see you.
- At the time that I was diagnosed,
my kids--I have two daughters-- they were four and two.
I had two tumors in my breast,
four spots in my spine,
a spot in my pelvis, and the top of my femur.
- Time spent in a hospital
is probably one of the most traumatic times for anyone.
People are ill.
They're away from their loved ones.
They spend a long time in a space that is foreign to them.
I do believe it is our responsibility to humanize that space.
- Okay, Kate, we've got it.
- Great.
- You still have your port, correct?
- I do have my port, yeah.
- Any pain today? - Nope.
- Anything we need to let Dr. Abraham know about while we're here?
- No. No concerns, no complaints.
- How are your girls doing?
- They're good. - Good.
- Yeah, virtual school starts on Monday.
Because I am stage IV, I will be in treatment for the rest of my life.
And I come here to the Taussig Center every three weeks for my infusions.
- Taussig Cancer Center is one of our newest buildings.
It's a building that tells a lot about what design stands for
here at Cleveland Clinic.
- We wanted it to be open and positive and welcoming
because patients are scared when they come to a cancer center
and we want them to experience hope.
[soft piano music]
- I believe very strongly that every detail is important...
Whether it's the way that the patient and caregiver interact
down to just the ease of use of a piece of furniture
or how the room looks and feels.
We want people to find not only a calm but an uplifting environment...
Feeling as if they'll be in very safe, caring hands.
- Hi, Kate. - Hi, Dr. Abraham.
- Are you friends with everybody here?
You know most of the nurses. [laughter]
- I'm a frequent flier.
- You're a frequent flier. - I know.
When you're here as much as I am... - Yeah.
- You know, going on five years, it's--
- You know a few of us.
- Yeah. - [laughs] "A few of us."
- Yeah.
- How are the kids? How's--
- Audrey and Olivia are doing great. School starts next week.
I'm living to see milestones, and that's--
- Right, right. - That's the goal.
It's night and day between the old Taussig Center and here.
[laughter]
There's so many more smiles here, even despite it's still a cancer center.
Yeah, it's a great life.
So happy to have you in it.
It sets the tone for how your day's gonna go,
and if your treatment day goes well,
it seems like the next day goes a little bit better
and the day after that.
[Velcro tears]
- Okay.
- All right, I'll let Dr. Gilligan know that you're ready.
You guys have a nice day. Be safe going home.
- Hopefully it's all good.
- Yes, hopefully.
- I sometimes hear doctors criticized for not being good communicators.
But I think people don't understand how hard the conversations are.
So that's an important point, that...
Over ten years ago, the clinic developed a training program
for all of our physicians
in how to conduct conversations with patients
that were built more around a strong relationship with the patients.
- We started very grassroots.
Let's get ten people we know in a classroom and try it.
- So I have some bad news about the scan results.
It's not what we were hoping for. - Okay.
- It looks like the cancer is still growing,
even with the chemo that we're giving you.
Sure that must be really hard to hear.
- Yeah. Yeah, that wasn't what I was... hoping for, obviously.
I really--I really thought this was gonna work.
- Yeah.
I'm gonna time out. - Yeah.
- So what do you think she needs at this point?
- I think maybe she needs even more time.
- To process what she's heard? - To process, yeah.
- Obviously we hope we can cure people.
Often we can; often we cannot.
And that experience of going through that kind of a crisis,
it's a very difficult time for people.
And patients need not only medical treatment,
but they also need help navigating that.
I think patients are often treated like they're just supposed
to do what we say and put up with it
and understand being ill sucks, we all know that, so just suck it up.
And we have to stop doing that, and empathy training is really--
really about that.
"I see you. I hear you.
I'm trying to imagine what it must be like to be in your shoes."
[door clicks open] Hello.
- Hey, Doc. - Hi.
- How are you? - Good.
- Good to see you. I would shake your hand, but...
- Right. [laughs]
- Not allowed to touch. - Right.
- So your PSA is fine, so I don't have any--
- Oh. - Yeah. [laughs]
- Any difficult news today.
- Yeah. - [crying] Suspense was killing me.
[somber music]
[sighs]
- Yeah, I know. It's a hard week before we test it.
- Yeah, it is.
- I think the stress level goes up. - Mm-hmm.
- So it's four years now, right? - It's four years now.
- Four years. - Right.
- Yeah. - [sighs]
- What was the number?
- It's still less than we can measure.
- Okay. - All right.
- I've been amazed at how the program has grown.
We have trained over 7,000 clinicians at this point.
We've run the course hundreds of times.
I think this is an important part of how to improve health care for the future.
- All right, come on up here for me.
- Which side, left or right?
- We are doing the left side today.
- That's what I thought, left side.
Dr. Gilligan helped me understand what metastatic cancer was
and how serious it is.
That's probably the first time that I realized
that my situation is a little more bleak
than I had thought it was.
The other doctors that I had in the other health-care system
never communicated that to me at all.
He let me know that we were in a fight.
[inspiring music]
- Operationalized empathy is about infusing empathy
to everything we do:
processes, people, technology,
every single touch point along the journey.
And the possibilities, I have to say, are endless.
[gentle piano music playing]
- The thing that really drew me to Cleveland Clinic initially
was the excellence of our cardiac surgical program.
I'm a heart surgeon, so the opportunity to be at the best place in the world
was a wonderful draw.
But a second thing that really brought me here to Cleveland Clinic
is a unique culture.
Cleveland Clinic has put this kind of a human touch in patient care
at the forefront of everything that we do.
The wisdom in our founding fathers was inspirational.
To put together the organization
that essentially has not questioned the fundamental concepts
in 100 years of service
is nothing short of exceptional and remarkable.
- It's important to recognize that what we've done here in Cleveland
around empathy and patient experience,
we've taken global.
We are Toronto, Abu Dhabi, Florida, London.
So we're a global organization working hard to keep you safe,
care for you as a person,
and be with you every step of the way.
- I just completed my 77th infusion.
Hi, girls. I'm all done.
- All set? - Hi. All set.
My hopes for my daughters are that they...
live to grow up in a world where breast cancer
isn't a thing; it's eradicated.
And if that's not the case, then I hope that they live to see a world
where doctors like Dr. Abraham are still here at the Cleveland Clinic.
I measure my life in pre-cancer and post-cancer,
and I feel like coming here and seeing the empathy
that they provide to all their patients
has made me more of an empathetic person.
In the waiting room, you see families that look so scared and so uncertain,
and I just want to go up to them and be like,
"It's gonna be okay because you're here,
"and if your oncologist is anything like mine,
you're in wonderful hands."