Medical Center leadership answers the tough questions about what the elevate program is and what it means for the people who work at VUMC.
Question: How do we take such a large medical center and ensure that we act as a team?
Answer: Within your first few days as an employee at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, you participated in “Hearts and Minds” orientation. It is no coincidence that the first topics you discuss in this orientation program are the mission, vision and credo of the Medical Center. These statements reflect what we should value most as employees and they serve as the “glue” that holds all of us together in serving the needs of our current and future patients.
Elevate takes these statements one step further by describing those behaviors that are most consistent with our values and credo. Our annual performance development program and our new recognition and rewards program provide a mechanism to recognize those employees who consistently perform in a manner that demonstrates our vision and credo. In other words, these employees “walk the talk” by performing their job in a way that reflects what we believe to be most important in an outstanding medical center.
Finally, the elevate pillar goals create a set of standards by which we can measure how well we are living up to our mission, vision and credo.
Providing the best possible care to our patients, the best educational environment for our students and a climate ripe for discovery for our investigators is definitely a team effort. Each and every one of us must do our part every single day to help ensure the accomplishment of our mission.
— Harry R. Jacobson, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs