Episode 8 - What is a "Culture of Acceptance"

Hi, I'm Nicole Purnell, the program director for Mama's Voices. In today's episode of the Power Mama's Voices podcast, I'm coming to you at you completely different. Usually our podcasts are done just audio and not done as a video. And today I am coming to you live from my office. I wanted to talk with you all about something that comes up quite often we teach on it all the time. We use it as a disclaimer before we start any presentation when we're talking with patients. And it's something that had been asked about recently, several times people looking for a resource. So I wanted to put something together for you all that then you can use as well. So what is it this thing that we get asked about so often, we really, really talk about? It is a culture of acceptance. And I cannot take full credit for this. Some of this came through work we did with another organization, but I wanted to be able to bring this to you and, and talk about this today and what does this mean and why is it so important in the work that we do. So we always do again, always do this in our presentations that we do we try to, if we're moderating it, is to, to give this as somewhat of a disclaimer before patients are sharing their stories and you'll see why. So this is us leading by example in our practices is to create this culture of acceptance. And what this means can mean many different things. So for starters, we wanna say that we acknowledge and we respect those of you with higher degrees, but we do not use honorifics in our groups. We want everyone to feel that they have. And a space to speak up. So we do not use doctor, we do not use those honorifics in our groups. And it's not for lack of respect, but we just want everybody to have that opportunity and feel comfortable and confident and to shift the power dynamic a bit so we can have open conversations. The next thing that is included in our culture of acceptance is when we talk about patient sharing. So when a patient is sharing a story, when they're sharing their story, when you're listening to this, sometimes you might hear something that isn't medically accurate or that doesn't happen in our facility. That's not how it. These are red flags. Lots of red flags here, and that is okay. I wanna encourage you not to get defensive, not to not to get, not to raise your hand, not to correct that patient. Take a moment to curb that urge. These are moments to learn from. These are where there's gaps in communication, and you can use these to apply them to your own work and see, this is how there's such communication gaps between providers and patients and where information is lost. Learn from those experiences. Don't be offended by them. Thank you for listening to that part. Another way that we can talk about and encourage a culture of acceptance is through talking about evidence. So oftentimes there are organizations, especially community-based organizations out there that have solutions. They are doing things and making big impact in their local communities. But it's such a burden and it becomes a barrier to have that P practice and that solution published to be deemed. Credible and to have that evidence that it doesn't happen, that does not mean that it's any less important that what somebody else is doing. It just has not had that availability yet, and that is okay. So that might not be, there might not be a body of evidence supporting it yet, yet. So give them a chance to have that happen. Let's don't dismiss those solutions because they don't have an evidence base behind them. Let's look for ways to make it so that they, we can use these as sources and references and be able to share them with others. Without having that. And just keeping in mind a friend of mine, Kate Matthews said in the presentation we did together, we get so focus. On the outcomes and the evidence and the evidence leads us to the outcomes that we forget about the experience and there's so much to be learned about the experience. So don't get caught up on if things are evidence based or not. Another way that we can. Adopt and, and help talk about and have a culture of acceptance is when we have these sensitive topics. We all have these triggers and we need to acknowledge that in order to grow, we need to be able to have and talk through these talk through our experiences. Sometimes a discussion might go into an uncomfortable topic. We don't want people to remain silent in fear of triggering someone else but this, but giving that this is a safe pace. Safe space to give and receive information in a non-judgmental way. And when we can take those barriers down. And, and understanding give that grace to people to have that space to talk through it. We might misspeak and it's not out of intentional trying to hurt somebody. It is just trying to find the right words and we wanna be able to create that space and understanding the people that are showing up or that ones that wanna do better. And they're here to make a change and to applaud that and give them the credit that they're trying to improve and make that change. So those are different areas that we talk about. And I'm sure there's many more, but these are the ones that kind of come up the most with us on how to create a culture of acceptance. And I just wanna challenge you that creating a culture of acceptance that starts right. It starts with being involved with mama voices. It starts by listening and knowing how to listen to what patients are saying instead of just making those assumptions. And that goes such a long way. So again, this is a short different kind of lesson and, and podcasts and coming at you in a totally different format, but I wanted to bring this to you all so that you have a resource going forward when you're talking to other people of this is why it's so important and this is what it means. And if you wanna learn more about Culture of Acceptance, we provide this and we talk about it in all of our trainings that we do through our lived experience integration, we would love to have. As part of that, and you can find those resources on our website under mommas voices.org/l ei. So thank you for coming and joining us today. I hope that you've got something out of this and you'll be able to use it later on. And just check the page to find all of the resources for this. We'll have some slides for you in a way to cite it in your presentations going forward. Thank you.