Q&A with Lori Herndon of AtlantiCare: ‘Teamwork is the dream work for me as a person, but also as a leader’

You started your career as a nurse in an AtlantiCare critical-care unit before becoming a hospital administrator. How has your clinical background affected your perspective as an executive leader?

I’m very proud of being a registered nurse, and I’ve been a nurse a very long time. Especially over the last two-plus years, teamwork and the ability to really understand the clinical experience and understand what the caregivers are going through, given my nursing background, have been incredibly helpful. And it has created a foundation for me to be able to serve our organization and, ultimately, the community.

How would you describe your leadership style? And what kind of culture do you want to foster at AtlantiCare?

I’ll keep talking about teamwork. Teamwork is the dream work for me as a person, but also as a leader. And it’s one of our key values at AtlantiCare. As a leader, I aspire to be able to listen, to be empathetic, to really understand what’s happening in the moment, and to support the leaders who surround me. At the end of the day, I was a nurse manager. I’ve worked every level of administration and healthcare. I can’t stress enough that when you’re leading an organization, it’s really important that you’re supporting the people who are doing those tough, critical jobs serving our patients and their families, and you’re getting out of their way sometimes, so they can do the work that they know needs to be done.

You’re talking about empathy as a core value of leadership. How do you look for that in the other leaders you bring on at the health system and make sure that’s going down the ranks, even to the front lines?

As a nurse, and as a woman, I think I have a little insight into getting closer and asking questions, as well as observing how people present themselves. Healthcare is one of those industries where it’s 24/7. You can’t always be so ticked and tied because it’s live and messy and engaging all at the same time. It’s pretty easy to get a read on where people are coming from and see how important it is to be able to put yourself in that person’s situation, how to read the situation, and understand that sometimes our goals or our agenda have to take a backseat to what is happening in front of you. That’s especially true in patient care, because we’re here to serve our patients and their families. We need to take their cues and follow through on what’s important to them.

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How has that worked with burnout among the staff? And what’s employee satisfaction like for you?

These last few years have taken all of us on a journey that none of us wanted to take. I’ve been incredibly inspired and just amazed at the level of commitment that I’ve seen every hour of every day across all of our organizations. The compassion and the focus on really putting patients’ and families’ needs first were paramount.

I think as administrators, we really needed to pay attention to what things we could do to support the staff, and they came in many different sizes and shapes. One of the things that was really clear to me is what was working in certain fields and professions didn’t necessarily always cross over. What registered nurses needed in a COVID unit was different than what the EMS team needed, and different from what maybe our physicians and our administrators needed. Everybody went through a lot. Everybody had some level of suffering and loss, some more dramatic than others. We had to keep getting up and coming to work, because our community and our patients needed us.

Kindness is a really important trait to you, both in leadership and in clinical settings. You’ve previously said that we should consider kindness as a social determinant of health. Why do you feel that way?

I feel that way because being in this journey these last few years, as well as being in healthcare for several decades, it became so clear to me that we were blowing through that simple human reaction and response. I wanted to use that phrase about kindness being so important and a social determinant.

In my mind, kindness is one of those things that’s really the foundation of our humanness. Sadly, we’ve all seen the short fuse of many of our community members and each other. We’re quick to judge, we’re quick to jump to a conclusion. Everyone was tired and frustrated and missing their vacations, missing all the things that bring them joy. To center yourself and recognize that if you could just think about being kind, and have that be your go-to, you could potentially change that interaction and have a little joy coming back to you, as you work on things that are complicated and difficult. Healthcare is very serious and intense, involving a lot of things that the average person never has to go through.

When you think about just trying to be kind, when you project a certain way of talking to somebody, most of the time that will come back to you.

How do you encourage healthcare leaders to add kindness to how they care for their staff and patients?

I had a chance to do a little intro to our new slate of officers for the New Jersey Hospital Association. I wove that into my talking points and that was played quite a bit around the region. We’ve talked about it at great lengths, in our board meetings, both internally and externally. There is some legislative activity around trying to create more recognition of what’s going on in healthcare right now. We don’t like the aggressive behavior of some of our patients and families, and we’re not going to take that behavior. Behind all that is if we could just be kind to each other and give everyone a break, we would end up with a much better outcome.

I understand that it may not be as exciting and dramatic as some other things that I could be talking about. But it really matters. At the end of the day, healthcare is a personal and very hands-on connection to another human being. Thinking about kindness is worthwhile at a personal level, but also organizationally.

That speaks to your background as a nurse and being in critical care. There aren’t many other nurses who are CEOs of health systems. What advice do you have for others who would want to follow a similar path as you?

I really respect those individuals who do this job who aren’t clinical, but I think having a clinical background is really helpful for me specifically. I didn’t aspire to be at this point in my career. I wanted to be a great nurse, and give compassionate, appropriate and supportive care to my patients and their families. I always had something to say, I always wanted to make things better. I was very focused on trying to improve and make a difference. That just opened doors for me.

Most leaders are looking for people who are interested in improving the work environment, improving patient care, the family experience and the clinical team care. If anybody has a passion for doing that, this is a great field to be able to map 
out a career path that will take them where they want to go.