HJNO Mar/Apr 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2022 15 all going through. There’s so much misin- formation and things that are not true in the media and social media that we’re trying to correct and ensure that the right informa- tion gets shared through the right channels. Editor How have you protected your men- tal health during the pandemic? On the darkest days, what gave you light? Thomas I am very much a believer of try- ing to focus on my own health. As far as my physical health, I exercise virtually every single day. I use that as my time to cen- ter myself and to release positive endor- phins into my body when I do my work- out. So, whether we’re going through the pandemic or hurricanes or what- ever, I continue to do those workouts because it’s really part of my routine on how I’ve been able to manage my own stress during this time. I’d also say I have an incredible team around me who have been an amazing support and, frankly, helped make my job easy as we’ve gone through this. They’ve been the real heroes and have done incredible work, whether it’s our infectious dis- ease specialists like Sandy Kemmerly and Kathy Baumgarten or the folks that run our operations every day like Robert Hart and Michael Hule- feld or the team that is working on our finances and making sure we keep our federal funding and FEMA claims straight, Pete November and Frank Bocklud and his team, or our team in HR, Tracy Schiro and her whole team that work on what’s going on from an HR perspective. We just have incredible people who do incredible things. And then there’s folks that stepped up like our academic officer, Dr. Leo Seoane, and his teamwho created a model in the beginning of COVID to help us predict what the inpa- tient census would be for COVID patients 14 to 21 days out, so we could estimate what that was going to look like. We didn’t have that when we started COVID, and he and his teamwent and created it. These are the folks that just have been incredible. Literally, hun- dreds and thousands of more other people have just made it come together. I’m very fortunate to be able to lead an incredibly talented team, to work with incredible physicians who have worked tirelessly to take care of patients day in and day out, frankly, without a lot of com- plaining over the past couple of years. Con- cerns, questions, needed clarification ... but whether it was going through a hurricane or going through another surge or taking on another challenge, folks are just like, “OK, it’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to take care of patients, take care of our commu- nity. How can we help each other?”It’s been extremely rewarding to watch, and I can’t say enough positive things about our phy- sicians, our nurses, our clinicians, all of our administrative folks, our management team, my executive team, and our board who have been extremely supportive. They have done an incredible job guiding us through this. My board chair, Andy Wisdom, I talked to virtually weekly going through this, and he was always a great support. I’m surrounded by incredible people that are really the ones that have done such a great job through this whole process. I’ve been fortunate to have a strong support system outside the organization. I have a great partner; she does a great job supporting me. My daughter’s been great through this, my sisters, my family ... as well as my team. Having a support system outside the organization is a critical part of being successful as an executive and as a leader. We all get energy in different ways, and I get energy from the people around me and from the feedback I get from employees, watching them be successful and do great things. Editor You mentioned gratitude at the beginning of this interview. How do you grow gratitude? Thomas It’s interesting. We had our leadership meetings, our top proba- bly about 3,000 people — it goes from supervisor up to executive levels. I talked a lot about gratitude. I talked a lot about the importance of support- ing each other. I talked a lot about just checking in on people, just “How are you doing? How are things going with you? Is there anything you need?” It’s interesting that people just want to have more connectivity. I’ve actually started my own grati- tude journal this year. I feel like I’m a pretty grateful person, but it’s another thing to actually sit down two or three times a week and write out what you are grateful for, who you’re grateful to. I’ve made a commitment to write a minimum of 80 thank you and recognition notes a quarter to people across our system, and I drafted about 10 or 12 of them over the weekend. I think there are so many amaz- ing things that happen, there are so many great people we have. People just want to be recognized. They just want to know what they do matters. They want to know if somebody cares about it. And, part of our job as leadership is to help folks understand we do care, what they do does matter, and that we need to be part of that whole gratitude process. I think “We realize that transparency is important in everything we do, and we want to continue to have a good relationship with the media, to be a source of information and knowledge to the media, because there are so many questions today about what we’re all going through. There’s so much misinformation and things that are not true in the media and social media that we’re trying to correct and ensure that the right information gets shared through the right channels.”