September 2, 2026: Salus Forum

Jeremy

Is it that the leadership is not working to co-regulate Jenny or others on her team. Jenny is co-regulating those on her team, but in a culture where vertical hierarchy and monetary decision-making are not necessarily done in a way to spread calm amongst the people. And I think part of it is that power is used to shake it up, as Bill B noted in using the metaphor of the snow globe. Some leaders just keep shaking the thing and they’re thinking, “a few people plop out here, plop out there, but as long as I got a globe, I’m shaking it”. And they believe that’s leadership. It really isn’t. That’s just messing with people.

Mark

I was really feeling for Jenny. I had two different thoughts. I don’t have an answer for the hierarchy above her among the so-called physician class. I really admire her dealing with the nurses and the other workers on the team and how there’s really the so-called flattened hierarchy. On the one hand, I was depressed for her, but my mind was racing to a largely untapped source. And that’s a lot of retirees, myself included, who still want purpose. It took me five years to feel comfortable in retirement, and I’m still not completely comfortable. But there’s an incredible resource of untapped talent that still want to have purpose that could be infused into palliative care and other pursuits.

The other thing I was thinking about is a colleague of mine who recently got a full professorship at UCSF in palliative care. I don’t think it’s a big HIPAA violation because it’s well known, but Pramita Kuruvilla recently got full professorship in palliative care. And having known her for many years, she would be an excellent resource regarding palliative care and dealing with this as a different animal. She’s in a university setting, she’s got some security, but she’s certainly somebody who has confronted a lot of these issues in the past of hierarchy and funding. She could be a valuable resource.

But I don’t have any answers other than a potential tapping of an underused resource, and that is retirees.

Bill B

Expanding the network. Yes. Thinking of the flock as including not just other people at Kaiser, but people that can give support.

Mark

It doesn’t really address the issues that Jenny currently faces with people in the medical hierarchy, how they would even be receptive to an influx of volunteers and credentialing. It doesn’t even begin to address that.