Inside My Heart But Outside the Box:
Thinking, To Change the Health Care Box
3 Day Intensive on Re-designing the Medical System (Sept. 23-25, 2005)
We have worked all our lives to be ready for this kind of intensive. The School for Designing a Society has for more than 25 years submerged itself in whole systems, language, and the clarity that things composed and designed can change or supplant things that interfere with peace, justice, and care for all people. The Gesundheit! Institute has been a design addressing all the problems of health care delivery for 35 years. We came together this last weekend to begin to see how these precious skills can stimulate and effect others to create their ideal healing self, delighted to work, in care, in their desired medical system.
For the first 15 years of Gesundheit, I know that I could not find people wanting to discuss design and delivery of their fantasy delivery system. Verbal shields of "that's not realistic," "that's too hard," "it's so naive" were thrown up. Being unfunded for 35 years has given me the privilege of thinking of the details of the project all that time, and, as a bonus, of being able to read hundreds of books on the subject and have thousands of conversations. As a result, the design of Gesundheit is deep, beautiful, comprehensive, and connected, so much more than each previous year.
It took interfacing and joining forces with the School for Designing a Society to lead to creating a process where others without final designs could congregate and be stimulated and supported to "think outside the box" of the horrible health care system we have in the United States.
This 3-day intensive in Urbana, Illinois was that experiment. Susan Parenti of the School created the weekend (thank you) and brought Mark Enslin and Rob Scott as teachers, and Gesundheit! brought three of its doctors (John Glick, Bowen White, and I). Young (medical and nursing students) and old (doctors, nurses, midwives) came from all over the US, Canada, and one each from Israel and Brazil. It could not have been a better group. We felt our ways through the format to see what happened: lectures, design groups, theater, a group clown trip to a local nursing home, hearing about local projects, and dancing. The group quickly felt and participated in the fun and love. So many said how "alone" they felt with their ideas in their own town or school, and how thankful to be with co-conspirators.
It has always been my idea that Gesundheit was not THE answer to the world's health care delivery problems; rather, Gesundheit's function is to stimulate others to dream their dreams, and also, to irritate nay-sayers! There were no nay-sayers at this intensive. All put input into the whole and felt a part. I loved it. To do this as a team, with each member having different offerings, allowed the participants to filter their desires differently. By the end, the participants spoke in superlatives for its value in their journey, and the teachers felt delight and the sense of the intensive's importance.
On the day after the intensive, we teachers and doctors asked ourselves what we liked/disliked, and what is to be next? We know we have invitations by medical-student communities to do something similar to this intensive—in Brazil, in Chile, in El Salvador. The Austrian hospital-building company, VAMED, says they wish to create desirable hospitals in Austria. Jay Bhatt, intensive participant and AMSA (American Medical Student Association) vice-president, said that he will discuss emphasizing care system design at future AMSA events. We teachers/doctors agreed that a 3-day intensive is not enough, and are thinking that a 7-day event would be more appropriate for the scope of what we're trying to do. If we offered a 7-day intensive, the first three days could focus on desire and design, and the last set of days could then focus on using that knowledge in terms of health care design.
We will be pursuing this, so keep contact with our journey!
What is your hunger?
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