Inside Duke Medicine

Values: Not something to do, but something we live

DUHS Values embody our culture and expectations for every individual, regardless of job role.

The DUHS core value of “Caring for our patients, their loved ones and each other” and five supporting values -- Excellence, Safety, Integrity, Diversity and Teamwork -- have been developed to focus on delivering the best care possible to all Duke Medicine patients and providing a consistent values culture throughout the health system.

The values were created through the work of countless individuals across the health system, representing all entities and a variety of job functions, including physicians, nurses, staff, and administrators. They reflect a consolidation of many separate values sets that existed previously.

“Our goal was to develop a core value and supporting values that would embody our culture and behavioral expectations for every individual, regardless of their entity or profession, within the health system,” said William J. Fulkerson Jr., MD, executive vice president of Duke University Health System.

While the values will be an important part of each employee’s annual performance assessment, they have been developed with a more profound objective as they are designed to represent the organization and its beliefs.

“The values are not something to add to our collective ‘to do’ lists but rather something to ‘live’ through our daily actions, behaviors and decisions,” Fulkerson said. “They are intended to serve as a compass to guide decision-making, and interactions with patients, visitors and co-workers.”

Fulkerson encouraged all employees to think about the values as they pertain to each individual’s role within the health system and discuss within units and teams how they can be demonstrated in job activities, and how they can keep each other accountable to the values in a spirit of mutual respect.

“It is incumbent upon everyone to commit to the values and hold each other accountable,” Fulkerson said. “After all, these values have little meaning as words alone.”

The introduction of the consolidated values are coming at a critical period in the history of the health system given some of the uncertainties of the health care environment and major internal initiatives underway. As the health care delivery system continues to evolve and increase the focus on efficiencies in care delivery, the values will provide the common set of guiding principles that bring together entities and work units that may work together in a different way.

"If our goals, priorities and values are not aligned, it will be difficult to provide a consistent set of services across the health system,” said Kevin Sowers, RN, MSN, FAAN, president of Duke University Hospital.
“Our core value perfectly illustrates Durham Regional’s mission,” says Kerry Watson, president of Durham Regional Hospital. “The DUHS values have always been at the foundation of everything we do at Durham Regional and are what we strive for, for every patient, every time.”

Similarly, Duke Raleigh Hospital has a longstanding legacy for acting as a values-driven organization but Doug Vinsel, president of Duke Raleigh Hospital, acknowledged the benefit of having consistent values system-wide.

“While the core value and supporting values are somewhat different from our previous values statements, they are very similar in spirit and intent,” Vinsel said. “The unifying health system values help strengthen our relationship with our colleagues in Durham and throughout the health system and focus the entire organization on our primary priority – Caring for patients, their loved ones, and each other."

View the complete pdf of the  Sept. 2011 Inside Duke Medicine or click through the articles online.