The Sim Cafe~ Interview with Geoffrey M. Roche

Geoffrey M. Roche, MPA, is an accomplished leader with steadfast commitment and passion for healthcare innovation, future-focused strategy, transformation, cultural change, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and workforce impact. His professional career includes over nine years in hospital administration as a strategic advisor to the President and CEO and department director of various departments, including Business Development and Planning, Government Affairs, Community Health, and Public Relations, for Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono. 

At Lebanon Valley College and Harrisburg University of Science and Technology Geoffrey held senior leadership roles focused on strategic partnerships, organizational strategy, and business development. As Senior Vice President, Business & Workforce Development at Dignity Health Global Education, he led a diverse team focused on developing institutional relationships with leading health systems while simultaneously championing national conversations and initiatives to develop innovative diversity, equity, and inclusion solutions for the healthcare workforce. He currently serves as the Senior Vice President, National Health Care Practice & Workforce Partnerships for Core Education. 

He is an Adjunct Instructor of Health Administration in the MBA/MHA Program at Moravian University and Corporate Faculty member in the Population Health program at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, serves on the United Way of Lebanon County and United Way of Pennsylvania Board of Directors, IU 13 Board of Directors, Leadership Council for Moravian College, Patient Safety Committee for WellSpan Good Samaritan Hospital, and as an elected School Director of Annville-Cleona School District. 

Roche earned his Master of Science degree in Management and Leadership: Public Administration at East Stroudsburg University and his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at Moravian University. He also holds a Mini-MBA in Healthcare from the University of Arizona, Eller College of Management, a Certificate in Innovation in Healthcare Management from Arizona State University, Thunderbird School of Global Management, the Certificate in Healthcare Leadership from Duke Corporate Education, and the Certificate in Heroic Leadership from Santa Clara University.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreymroche/

Heroic Leadership book: https://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Leadership-Practices-450-Year-Old-Company/dp/0829421157

Beaker Health: https://beakerhealth.com/

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Transcript

Disclaimer: 0:00

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Simsolutions or our sponsors.

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Intro: 0:59

Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Simsolutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, Deb Tauber as she sits down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in, and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.

Deb: 1:32

Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe. Today we're truly blessed to have Geoffrey Roche. He is an accomplished leader with a steadfast commitment and passion for healthcare innovation, future focused strategy, transformation, cultural change, diversity, equity and inclusion, and workforce impact. His professional career includes over nine years in hospital administration as a strategic advisor to the president and CEO and department directors of various departments, including business development and planning, government affairs, community health and public relations for Lehigh Valley Hospital Poncono. Thank you. Uh, would you like me to call you Geoffrey, or,

Geoffrey: 2:16

Um, Geoffrey is fine.

Deb: 2:17

Okay. Thank you. Geoffrey, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself before we get into the discussion today.

Geoffrey: 2:23

Absolutely. Well, thank you Deb for having me. And, and thank you for all the, the work that you do in, in healthcare and education as well. So obviously, uh, son of a nurse, um, started my, uh, ironically my healthcare career in June of 2008. Obviously a lot of impact and influence from my mom and the work that she did, uh, as a labor and delivery nurse and, and particularly my entire upbringing. I, in fact, I was telling my own children recently that when my mom was in nursing school, I was in preschool. And so, you know, she was literally an adult working learner who became a nurse. And when I was in preschool, you know, I would go every day with her to nursing school. And so we were talking about that experience and something I actually remember fondly, and we have it on video when she graduated, but I came into healthcare, didn't think I would come into healthcare ironically, actually did a lot of work in, in politics. I had interned on the hill and, and following that, one of my academic advisors at academic institution suggested that I do an academic internship at Lehigh Valley Health Network, which I did this entire semester of my senior year. And after that, honestly, I fell in love with really healthcare leadership and administration and felt strongly that I had an opportunity to go into healthcare and really be the type of leader that would value, treasure and help advance, particularly support for nurses, but also for other clinician. And so was fortunate to, you know, spend, you know, just under a decade at, at what was Lehigh Valley Hospital, Pocono, where I was part of the, of the leadership team, worked very closely with our president ceo, who also happened to be a nurse, which was an amazing experience to work for a CEO that was a nurse, um, and really do some amazing work to advance, uh, clinical initiatives, advance, you know, strategic objectives, but really have an immense impact on the region.

Deb: 3:57

Very, very good. Very good. Now is your mom first generation nurse?

Geoffrey: 4:02

She is, yep. First generation. And she's actually, you know, I'm a first generation American because my mom was born in Germany, first person in our entire family to work in healthcare.

Deb: 4:10

My mom, they're very cool. My daughter's third generation, so my aunts were both nurses and my daughter, then myself and my daughter.

Geoffrey: 4:17

Oh, That's so cool.

Deb: 4:18

In the blood<laugh>. In the bloodline<laugh>. Um, alright, I'm gonna go ahead and ask you if you could share your journey into simulation and leadership.

Geoffrey: 4:28

Yeah, so, you know, interestingly enough, my journey, obviously talk first about leadership and then talk about simulation. But, you know, my journey into leadership particularly started fairly early actually in my career, but in many ways actually started when I was a college student because I was at a, I was at Moravian University, which is one of the oldest private liberal arts colleges in the country. But we as a, as an institution, you couldn't graduate if you didn't do some aspect of leadership in our program. And so I was fortunate to be at an institution that really valued leadership. And so I spent a lot of time really growing as a leader in my college, uh, career. And then obviously when I started in healthcare, I was fortunate to be in a community regional healthcare system that truly valued mentorship and empowerment and coaching and helping other people see the opportunities that they could actually have, you know, literally at their fingertips. And so started, as I mentioned in June of oh eight, was really mentored by a number of leaders, as I mentioned our ceo, but also one of our senior vice presidents and, and other directors. And ultimately it was promoted to be that time the youngest director in the healthcare system, which was very interesting because then I was managing at times people who had quite a bit more experience than me. But as I learned and, and worked with them, there was so much that we could learn from one another and there was so much that we could treasure from an experience level that that could ultimately impact our patients, but also impact our community that we were privileged to serve. So particularly from leadership, continued to grow, was formally trained in a number of areas, went through our emerging leader program at our healthcare system, formally trained in crucial conversations, which we, we often call it in healthcare, you know, as you'll appreciate on stage, off stage, if you're dealing with a patient, family member, community member, you're on stage. If you're dealing with others, you're off stage. But, but how do you make sure that you have the right communication when you are on stage And, and even so when you're off stage, how do you make sure that you're still being thoughtful around that? So from a leadership perspective though, particularly my journey into simulation and really the impact of, of really interdisciplinary education around training was really when I started to particularly get involved in our healthcare system in the development of our emergency medical service strategy. That, and also actually when we as a healthcare system, were working with East Stroudsburg University to really in some ways modernize and, and help bring some of their practices on the nursing education side in a manner that would help us on the workforce side. And so I worked closely with their faculty, our chief nursing officer and our CEO and others to actually look at how we could update their curriculum. One area of which was actually to look at simulation. So we did a lot of work collaboratively in a learning collaborative that looked at how could we better train their nursing students to become not just more proficient nurses, but better train nurses from a perspective of when they got to the floor. And so a lot of work was done between the healthcare system and the education side to do that. And then on the EMS side, as you know, you do a ton of emergency medical services trainings and workshops and such. And so I was privileged actually for a number of years to lead our team, our clinical team actually ironically, because we acquired an ambulance. And it was decided that from a strategy end that should report to me. And so I was fortunate to work with a immensely successful team who really led some of the most effective educational programs in the region. But ultimately the, you know, simulation was an important part of that work as well. And obviously as you know, back then we were really using nothing like today, um, in terms of simulation. But what I learned in that process was, you know, really the art and the importance of how simulation should be viewed as really part of a formal training. And I think particularly in these days, how more important it is than ever to actually also use simulation to address issues of health disparities.

Deb: 8:10

Uh, I couldn't agree more. Uh, so what I heard you saying was that you were actually training new grads to fit into the emergency department, so building them into the culture, which I think is very, very smart on an organization's part because it's one thing to train someone, but it's another thing to have them fit into your, within your culture and the values that the organization has.

Geoffrey: 8:33

Yes. Yeah, and I think to your point, you know, even when I've gone through simulations on empathy and different simulations on conversations and then actually been graded, you know, in those situations, I was actually following one of those examples that I went through. I actually was talking to my former director of leadership development because to your point, when you wanna help an individual understand your culture, that's the power of simulation. Uh, you know, I can remember the first time I literally went through it was actually Arizona State University has their science, you know, their STEM curriculum that involves simulation. And fortunate to, at one time at a conference had the opportunity to go through that. And one of my colleagues and friends was like, Oh my gosh, you are really into it. And I said, Well, if I would've taken science and it would've been simulation based, I would've loved science. It was just so engrossed in that learning element that clearly we can see why patients benefit too from simulation in various different forms because it does take you outta that normal reality and puts you into a different reality. And I think there's just something to be said about the power and the impact that it can have.

Deb: 9:36

I agree. Now, Geoffrey, do you have a favorite or most impactful simulation story that you'd like to share with our learners?

Geoffrey: 9:44

Yeah, you know, one thing in particularly that comes to mind is when we were particularly in our healthcare system at the time, we were the third busiest emergency room actually in the Commonwealth. And so a lot of our work here in Pennsylvania at that time was being in the Poconos large border parks, um, specifically large employers, lot of tourists and, and a lot of trauma. And so, you know, particularly when I look back on those most exciting moments, one of the things that we were doing a lot of work on was always preparing our workforce in simulated trainings for those large scale opportunities. And when I say opportunities, they actually should be more clear, large scale crisis situations where you actually have to respond appropriately. So as you know, when you do simulations and you do, you know, simulation exercises, oftentimes you're preparing and preparing for some things that you hope never happen. But then when they do, you look back and you can see the impact that occurs because of that simulation. And so for so long, I was part of our crisis preparedness team at the healthcare system. And so we would do various scenarios, sometimes tabletop simulations, tabletop exercises. In fact, I was part of our FEMA team in the region. And so we would do a lot of those things as well. And as you know, as a trauma center, you do a lot of simulating, but there was a situation once that we had done a number of diss simulations around because we are a level three trauma center, which meant, you know, we could only handle certain cases and then anything advanced needed to go to a level two or level one. And we had always prepared around what happens in a situation where, yes, you're a level three, but you get so many level threes that you kind of become overloaded. And that happened one time, actually, we had a, a tragic bus accident that was actually carrying Italian individuals, uh, tourists who were here in the Poconos. And that was a very large scale bus accident that ultimately had trauma patients that literally went to four or five different hospitals, of which we received many Geisinger received several, we have all actually at the time, which we were not part of at that at that time, received some St. Luke's received some and others received patients as well. And I will tell you, you know, it's interesting when I look back on that there was so much that we had trained through simulation for, but there, there was one thing that we didn't, and it's an important one that I highlight because, you know, what we didn't train for was, yes, we had an interpreting service line, but it wasn't enough because we had so much that the service wasn't able to keep up with the number of family members who needed support. And one of the things that came to mind for me now when I look back on that, is the importance of health literacy and how can we ensure that when we do simulations that we're bringing in topics of health literacy. Because ultimately lives are not only impacted, but family members wanna know. And so I'll tell you what we ended up having happen was we were fortunate to be in a community that had quite a bit of individuals that spoke at time, and we had to bring them in as volunteers, partner them with a healthcare provider, so that all times they were being, they were not a healthcare professional, but we partnered them with a healthcare professional so that the right communication could be shared.

Deb: 12:41

That is a great story. That is a fascinating story. And you know, I think right now, today, uh, 9/27, I think of our friends in Florida who are preparing for, you know, in the Tampa area for a potential disaster. And you know, I'd like to say a prayer for them, right? Yeah, it's,

Geoffrey: 13:01

And you bring up such an important point. I was just actually just in Tampa last week, and you know, one of the things that was interesting about coming back from Tampa was how many people were on the flight literally coming to Pennsylvania, But to your point, for our healthcare professionals who are still on the ground, we'll be on the ground. These are those moments where we'll have to really be thinking about them because we all prepare, but, but you just never can prepare for these types of things and, and how it's going to go and power go out happens. Um, but it all gets back to the importance of simulation because hopefully all of them have prepared as much as possible for these types of things.

Deb: 13:33

Right. So as a thought leader, as a thought leader, where do you see the future of not just simulation, because I think it's broader than that, especially with the experience that you have as a no, as a leader, Where do you see healthcare going?

Geoffrey: 13:47

Yeah, you'll hear me say this a lot of times. You know, I think healthcare is, is truly in flux. And I think not just the pandemic, but as a whole, you know, we've been on this long evolution and move to value-based care. It's taken far too long for us to truly move to value-based care, which I think is, is a huge problem. But it speaks to some of the core facets that holds healthcare back often. And that's sort of the influence of certainly, uh, you know, money and reimbursement and those types of things. But I will tell you, I'm, I'm a bit encouraged because I'm starting to hear leaders in our healthcare systems, both clinical and non-clinical, acknowledge that if we're gonna address workforce issues and if we're gonna address some of our systemic issues in healthcare, we're also gonna have to look at the changing of the models of care. And we're also gonna have to look at some of those systemic issues that pulled us back. But in that conversation, what I have continued to say is that we have to, at the core, remember that we're a human centered industry. And I think for far long we've actually gotten away from that. That even though we're here to support our patients, we haven't made sure that every decision, every service, every aspect of our healthcare system is human centered. And I've experienced that myself numerous times in different healthcare environments. And I can remember several months ago going for a test and literally being told, Oh, we don't have the person on site to provide that test after they told us they did. And literally, even though I'm a healthcare person, I said, You know, your healthcare system is broken. And those things are so frustrating, and I think about for people who don't understand healthcare, how much more frustrating it is as compared to those of us that do. So I think first and foremost, we've gotta get back to basics and we've gotta really hone in on the fact that healthcare is a human-centered industry. The other element for me that I'm encouraged, but we've gotta move much more quickly, is really on the issues of addressing healthcare disparities. There are, there are so, so much embedded into the systemic culture of healthcare. And this is where again, I believe simulation can be a powerful instrument to help us understand, train, retrain, uh, and really hold people accountable. And then the third I would say is I think we've gotta really be thoughtful around debriefing. We haven't done enough in our healthcare system to truly debrief both clinically and non clinically. And I was just with a group of healthcare leaders recently and I was encouraged to hear them talk about the power of debriefing because if even on my own healthcare administration time, I can remember tragic situations where, you know, I was actually sharing last week when I was with these healthcare leaders of a situation at our healthcare system where unfortunately we had a, a father of a staff member show up to the emergency room who was in a lot of medical issues at the time. And unfortunately he committed suicide outside of the emergency room. Now mind you, none of us knew who this was at the time. What we knew was a gunshot went off outside the emergency room, which meant we needed to lock down the hospital. We had patients in the waiting room of the emergency room who we needed to relocate to get them into a safe venue so that we could lock down that whole section cuz we didn't know what was happening. Now mind you, I was walking into that space at that time. So yes, I've been trained, but I'm certainly not security, not a professional in the same sense of what others, who our clinical would know what to do. But I, as I look, look back on that example, one of the things that I learned from it because of our leaders who we had at the time, our chief nursing officer, our ceo, was we rallied together and we took every single one of the clinicians that were in the emergency room because ultimately we then found out, you know, the connection and, and such, we took all of them out of service, we brought nurses from other units, and our CNO said, Look, the reality of it is, is these are those moments where we need to get all the support we can for those folks. We brought mental health professionals in to help support the needs. And uh, and we managed it extremely well, also brought men mental health support for the patients and visitors who unfortunately heard everything and, and saw what had happened, but can't always prepare for those things. But what you can prepare for is that you have to embed in the culture debriefing, you've gotta embed in the culture where we learn from one another and we, we work together to overcome those obstacles. And I'm encouraged to hear it, but we've, we've gotta do more of it. I'm really frustrated at times when I hear resilience. I'm so tired of hearing the word resilience because you know what? There is no healthcare professional who's not resilient, but there are healthcare professionals who are burnt out and oftentimes they're burnt out because of the same culture that's been created.

Deb: 18:06

Absolutely. I'm reading a book, it's called Think Again, and it's by Adam Grant, and I think it's an amazing book. And he challenges assumptions, like what are assumptions that we have just thought for for so long. And it's really provided me an opportunity to think bigger and to think to unthink some of the things I always thought. And I think in healthcare that's one of the things that we absolutely have to do is challenge our assumptions. Can you share with us what happened during the Covid pandemic in some lessons that were learned? And I can imagine on the front lines, you, you've a lot to, to share.

Geoffrey: 18:44

Yeah, for me, one of the things that I learned particularly, and when I say learned it was just really a heightened awareness was particularly how we, so in Pennsylvania, I was part of a leadership team under the leadership of our then Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine, who obviously now serves at the federal government level at HHS as the assistant secretary. But Dr. Levine had assembled a, a group that I was privileged to be a part of, a leadership team of our commonwealth that represented diversity, equity, inclusion, but also broad spectrum of experiences to actually not only study but in a daily manner respond to our health equity issues of the pandemic. And we were one of the first states in a comprehensive manner that did that. And what was powerful about that experience and what we learned was how hungry our healthcare systems, our academic institutions and others within the full healthcare ecosystem were for this type of organized structure. Because we were in situations where we were having physicians of ob gyn units calling in and reaching out for help and support to better understand how they could communicate with their patients. And at the same time we were dealing with our, you know, older adults who were significantly disproportionately impacted throughout the pandemic, but we were doing it in real time. And you know, I'll tell you one of the things I was proud of was that our group was reporting daily these situations and they were getting reported to our command center in the commonwealth. And obviously they were then using that information to communicate with all of our healthcare systems, our nursing homes, et cetera. That's a model that we've gotta continue. I think in healthcare we do a lot of really good work around crisis, but we don't always continue that work when we get outta that crisis. And so what I'm encouraged by is that we're now starting to see more and more embedding of that into all facets. And we've got to, because that's how we're gonna truly disrupt disparities.

Deb: 20:30

Thank you for sharing that. Now, Jeffrey, can you share with our listeners the biggest thing that you'd like them to know? Like something that when you learned it, it changed everything for you? So essentially a personal aha moment,

Geoffrey: 20:46

The one thing that's really interesting and I would say is on my mind today to answer that question would be, so I was fortunate, I took a program several months ago through Santa Clara University, which was heroic leadership program that was actually developed and offered by Chris Lowney. And if, if you don't know who Chris Lowney is, Chris Lowney is an author and one of the most successful individuals in our society who ultimately now serve for many, many years in, in industry. Then it was also a lay minister and then ended up, uh, now as actually the chairman of the Common Spirit Health Board of directors. But Chris Lowney wrote the book Heroic Leadership and this was a program on heroic leadership. And for me it was an aha moment because it was the first time in this course that I learned and was really in many ways inspired by his reference that leadership is love. I mean that if you practice loving leadership in all facets of our healthcare system, but also in society, you can not only transform lives, but you can impact everyone in a way that is truly transformational. And that's an aha for me because I think in healthcare for far long we've had leaders who may have good intentions but aren't necessarily thinking about how their words, how their actions correspond with loving leadership. And again, you don't have to love everybody, but you have to think about how the work that you do is done in love. And that was what was powerful about that.

Deb: 22:11

I wrote that name down and we'll go ahead and put that in the show notes with, uh, the name of the book. It sounds like, uh, something I'm gonna need to read next.

Geoffrey: 22:19

It's good. Yeah, it and, and honestly he is just a, an amazing thought leader that obviously Common Spirit Health is fortunate to have as the chair of their board because his practice is also what he preaches and so there's never a moment where he doesn't preach the same way that he practices.

Deb: 22:36

Very nice to hear. Is there anything you wanna ask me?

Geoffrey: 22:41

You know, in particular, the one thing I wanna play ask you is as you look at simulation in the work that you do, what does the future of it look like that you know, that you think would be important for all of us in healthcare to be mindful of?

Deb: 22:54

I think at this point, at this juncture, it's gonna be really important that we don't go all out for the virtual reality. We make sure that we make the right selections. I think that there's going to be a mix of VR and simulation combined. You know, make sure that you're getting the right tool for the right job, right? Not everything's a nail just because you're a hammer. Um, so I think that would be my thing is to make sure that you're not wasting resources. I have appreciated this time very much and I know our listeners well. If there's a way that they wanted to get ahold of you, what would be the best way, Geoffrey?

Geoffrey: 23:33

Yeah, I would encourage anyone to reach me on LinkedIn, certainly the best way and always happy to engage and more importantly, just love networking and the impact that we can, you know, not only that we can have together, but share together.

Deb: 23:44

Well. Well, thank you very much and happy simulating.

Beaker Health Tag: 23:50

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Outro: 24:04

Thanks for joining us here at The Sim Cafe. We hope you enjoyed, connect with us at www. Innovativesimsolutions.com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode of The Sim Cafe.