Intentionally building trust through system changes

In spring 2020, The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s medical intensive care unit (MICU) and Chaplain Elizabeth Tracey quickly realized that her colleagues were having a difficult time connecting with patients, and patients with their care providers, and devised a way for MICU clinicians to learn more about their patients in order to better treat them – through short audio interviews with family members. This Is My Story (TIMS) has since expanded beyond its COVID-19 origins and is being replicated at hospital systems across the country.

Chaplain Elizabeth Tracey, director of Johns Hopkins Health NewsFeed, and Richard J. Baron, MD, MACP, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and ABIM Foundation, discussed how the two-minute connection provided by TIMS is building trust by giving care teams a humanizing window into the lives of patients who often can’t speak for themselves.

Additional Resources:

• An Introduction to a Novel Intervention, “This is My Story”, to Support Interdisciplinary Medical Teams Delivering Care to Non-Communicative Patients
• An ICU Expansion of a Novel Chaplain Intervention, “This is My Story,” to Support Interdisciplinary Medical Teams Delivering Care to Non-Communicative Patients in an Academic Medical Center Patients
• Review: This Is My Story
• Watch: Right Here Right Now-Solutions: Telling Stories About Patients as People
• Watch: TIMS “How To”