AAMC 2013: Wing of Zock

Conroy: My name is Joanne Conroy and I'm Chief Healthcare Officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Interviewer: So tell me a little bit about Wing of Zock.

Conroy: So we believe that we needed another forum that was less homogenized for conversations to occur between hospital leaders, medical school leaders, and students about innovations in healthcare that they saw occurring in their institutions and or innovations and changes in the healthcare delivery system that they aspired to.

Interviewer: Tell me what you mean by homogenized. What was the content before?

Conroy: Just like any large organization, there's a public face of that organization which of necessity needs to be go through several filters before it's released. But if you're really talking about innovation you actually have to take a lot of risk and allow people to be unleashed, to some degree. That's what we hope to accomplish, and I believe we have accomplished with a Wing of Zock.

Interviewer: And so what is it about Wing of Zock that you think allows people to feel a little more free to talk about their best ideas.

Conroy: You can actually express an idea pretty succinctly in less than 700 words compared to some peer reviewed publications that would require perspectives to be feel far more academic. This feels far more emotional in we actually ask people to speak from their personal perspectives as well, and you find that when people put pen to paper and they're talking about their personal perspective, it actually occurs relatively quickly and effortlessly. You actually learn a lot about the about the authors of these blogs that I'm not sure they prepared to reveal that when they started but So it's both content valuable but it's actually very valuable from a human perspective in healthcare.

Interviewer: Because there's no better way to learn something than to through someone's personal story, I think. Right?

Conroy: Right. That's right. You know, sometimes we send the blogs back to contributors and ask them to make it more personal, and that's an unusual request in academic medicine. But I think an appropriate one because healthcare is personal and healthcare is often local.

Interviewer: Are there a couple that come to mind that really stand out to you?

Conroy: I We had some interesting blogs from people that were affected by lack of insurance and actually we just retweeted one that was incredibly moving from a woman who said she owes her life to the expansion of insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and it makes some of our public policy actually become personal, and I think that's really important for Americans to know.

Interviewer: Do you think this stories like that help serve as a reminder that it is more than just the doctor-patient relationship? That it is very personal?

Conroy: Yeah. What's interesting is we get the greatest number of hits and retweets from those personal stories that are emotionally powerful than we do out of any policy debate that we would feature.

Interviewer: So this really is filling a void or a need to get out this type of content?

Conroy: Yeah. It does and we do spend a lot of time talking about innovations, but they're innovations that people find personally satisfying, and or there's a personal face to them. It's personal and emotional and but we learn when we embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we do.