The Salus Forum

Integration of perspectives and practices in health care communities Learn More

The Salus Challenge

Understanding Complex Adaptive Systems in Health Care Learn More

The Salus Forum

A Place for Reflection and Action Learn More

Salus: A Wish for Health in a Health Care Commons

Gatherings for the sharing of perspectives and strategies Learn More

Salus: A Wish for Collective Health in The Health Care Agora

Bridging the differences, hopes and fears in health care communities throughout the world Learn More

Salus: A Generative Forum

Sharing and engaging diverse, multi-disciplinary perspectives and practices. Learn More

A Mall of Innovation and Unconventional Thought and Action

Gatherings for the sharing of diverese insights and strategies regarding health care Learn More
Digital Health Care Resources Learn More Health Care Communities Collaborating New Layer New Layer New Layer New Layer Health Care Communities Collaborating: The News Stand New Layer Learn More New Layer

Learning Into the Future

VUCA-Plus Conditions in Health Care

How can our healthcare leaders build the right new skills and engage the appropriate strategies when guiding healthcare in the future? What is the nature and impact of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity in healthcare settings? What type of leader will emerge to effectively navigate a turbulent world that is filled with contradictions and polarities?

Read More about VUCA-Plus

In what ways do health care leaders escape into a distorted world of serenity?

Read More about Escape into Serenity

In what ways might a health care leader find an effective strategy to deal with the Essentials in a VUCA-Plus environment?

Read More about the Lens of Essential. Part One

Read more about the Lens of Essential. Part Two

Read more about the Lens of Essential. Part Three

Read more about the Lens of Essence. Part One

Challenges of the Present

Complex Adaptive Systems in Health Care

Com-Col Mission: Strengthen Communities

US health care is a complicated tangle of health care organizations that are influenced by politics, the economy, and evolving public needs.  Labeled today a “complex adaptive system”, we want to analyze, simplify and understand how best to improve US health care for the future.

Read Essay One

Read Essay Two

Read Essay Three

Heading towards Tomorrow

Plans for Changes and Growth in Health Care

Understanding theories and models is key as we try to make sense of what’s happening in today’s health care. Only after we understand these experiences can we determine what they mean for us. We gain insights from case studies shared by our friends in the Salus Forum who have been leaders in different health care systems. We learn from their experiences.

We explore models of illness, disease, and health from the perspective of culture and ethnicity rather than primarily from the now dominant individual perspective. Our models color how we approach disease, illness and health both in planning and critiquing systems of care. They also impact the approach we take to our own health.

Health Care Team Operations and Design

Leadership in Health Care: Coaching, Balancing and Moving Across Multiple Cultures

Salus Health Care Forum: Collaborative Conversations

Diverse communities of thought aided by constructive dialogue often bring about new perspectives and practices in the field of health care. We offer a series of recorded dialogues and interviews among those participating in regularly scheduled Health Care Forum.

Here is link to the first of these forums held on April 3, 2024.

We offer a link to the second of these forums held on June 5, 2024.

Our third forum held on July 3, 2024 focused on the process of allostasis.

The prevention and treatment of Obesity was the focus of the forum held on August 7,2024

During the forum held on September 4, 2024 attention was given to the role played by mental models in health care, especially related to high fructose corn syrup’s impact on contemporary health care.

The forum held on October 2, 2024 focused on allostatic load as related to socio-economic level, race and discrimination.

Requesting information regarding ways to participate in the collaboration among health care communities

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The Health Care “Soap Box”: Right Train? Right Track?

Four Cultures of Health Care?

In this section of the forum, we will begin to describe core dynamics that may lie at the heart of health care.  We will present a model (The Four Cultures of Health Care) which provides a potential framework for understanding the complexities of contemporary health care systems, and perhaps generates new ideas about how we can come together to heal the people and the system of which we are all a part. To begin this discovery process, we start with what lies at the core of health care: anxiety.

Anxiety and Health Care

We go on to identify four cultures that we believe emerge in response to the anxiety and operate in contemporary health care systems. The first of these cultures is professionally oriented. Here is a description of this culture and its historical roots:

The Professional Culture

Health Care, Leadership and Coaching

Health Care and Leadership

What role should physicians play as leaders in contemporary health care systems? We offer links to a series of essays concerning this question. The first set of essays concern the appropriate style(s) of leadership that should be engaged by physicians:

Physician as Leader: 3 Fundamental Styles

Physician as Leader: 4 Blended Styles

Health Care and Coaching

Can mid-21st Century health care benefit from a dose of psychology and behavioral medicine? Is there a place for health-based coaching in contemporary health care institution? We proposed that the health-based coach can assist their client to bridge the gap between and integrate several different disciplines: psychology, biology, environmental studies, neurobiology and spirituality. Together, these interwoven disciplines provide what might best be called a biopsychosocial perspective on health.

Health-Based Coaching and a Biopsychosocial Perspective

Library One: Recommended Resources

Cassatly, Michael, (2013) The Transformative Shifts in Health Care Compels Coaching,  Library of Professional Coaching, April 14.

Emerson, Brian and Kelly Lewis, (2019) Navigating Polarities: Using Both/And Thinking to Lead Transformation. Paradoxical Press.

Johnson, Barry (1996) Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems. HRD Press.

Lustig, Robert (2021) Metabolical. New York: Harper.

Meadows, Donella (2008) Thinking in Systems. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Miller, John and Scott Page (2007) Complex Adaptive Systems. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Snowden, Dave (2023) Cynefin Framework. Retrieved from: https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework/

Stacey, R.D. (1996), Strategic Management & Organisational Dynamics, Pitman, London

Brief Biographies of Salus Forum Members. 

 

The following link provides information on Salus Forum Members.

Jeremy Fish, M.D.

William Bergquist, Ph.D.

Perry Pugno, M.D.

Forum Members

Library Two: Documents Published by Participants in Salus Health Care Forum 

Mindi K. McKenna. and Perry A. Pugno

Physicians as Leaders: Who, How, and Why Now

Christie Lewis, Kendell Munzer and William Bergquist (Editors)

Pathways to Health

Margaret Cary and William Bergquist (Eds)/Library of Professional Coaching/Future of Coaching:

Health-Based Coaching and Wellness

Michael Cassatly and William Bergquist

Coaching in Health Care: The Physician/Patient Relationship

Communitas: The Salus Newsletter

Associations

Library of Professional Psychology

Library of Professional Coaching