Deliberate Learning Can Help Providers Adapt, Says Dr Lee Norman

A deliberate learning mindset is beneficial for health care providers to have, said Lee A. Norman, MD, MHS, MBA, the senior medical director for Optum Care Kansas City. He served as the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment from 2019 to 2021 under Governor Laura Kelly. Norman, who also served in the US Air Force and later as a colonel in the Kansas Army National Guard, spoke in March at The American Journal of Managed Care^®’s Institute for Value-Based Medicine^® event on population health in Kansas City, Missouri.

Transcript

How can deliberate learning help health care providers be more open-minded and willing to adapt to change?

Yeah, deliberate learning—and I chose that word, well, very deliberately. And that was because a lot of times, physicians and just people in general want to close off their ears and say, there's just too much information, I just want to hunker down, do what I do, know what I know, and protect me from the rest of the world out there. Especially if people are in somewhat of a burnout situation, or they're just tired, they don’t want to learn anything new. But that's not going to carry the day, in a value-based world or a fee-for-service world.

Physicians and caregivers have to keep an open mind. I myself read probably an hour and a half a day—health systems information, clinical information, research studies, and the like—to always stay on top of things. And that is a very deliberate act. You have to stay up on things. That's deliberate learning.