She’d been in a physician leadership role with the VA for seven years.
Over her tenure, she’d never seen the system rise as one team like this. “There’s so much we don’t know about COVID. But our teams are stepping up in ways I could never have imagined.”
“I am incredibly proud of our ingenuity, our assets, and our excitement about learning together. I am proud of how our innovation team has made PPE using a 3-D printer to ensure we can meet our needs across the country because the implications of COVID on healthcare are not the same everywhere. I’m proud of our research teams and their willingness to collaborate with each other. I’m proud of how we’ve hit the ground running as one team (because it’s not our natural behavior) and that we’re making our assets and resources more broadly available to the public as well,” she said.
“There is still so much we don’t know. But the flipside of not knowing is that there’s so much we can learn.”
Listener Poet Jenny Hegland
Veterans' Affairs Center for Development & Civic Engagement
August 2020
The Flip Side
It’s scary how much we didn’t know
in the beginning…it’s scary how much we
still don’t know today.
But the flip side
of not knowing
is that we have so much to learn.
In the learning, there is courage
to debunk the myth of a monolith
that healthcare is the same everywhere.
In the learning, there is awe
in witnessing the ingenuity of our innovations team
printing PPE (using 3D) to supplement our needs.
In the learning, there is pride
that we’ve made the latest and greatest information
available to those on the front lines, in a useful way.
In the learning, there is excitement
in experiencing our system learning together (maybe,
for the first time ever) and rising together as one.
In the learning, there is joy
that the flip side of not knowing
is a surprising abundance of shared growing.
