Environment

Our vision is to create a workplace where diverse faculty and residents are empowered to achieve their best in an academic environment that explores, continually improves, and celebrates the core value of diversity manifest in an inclusive environment.

Our Initiatives

Department of Surgery Mission: Compassionate care for patients. Innovative research for surgery. Training for the next leaders and best.

The success of the Department of Surgery rests largely on a culture in which individuals are supported to advance and thrive. Our goal is to intentionally promote and protect an environment that cultivates and supports academic and clinical excellence, discovery, and innovation; one that celebrates individual differences, honors our shared values of inclusion, collaboration, and wellness, and fosters a sense of pride and excellence in our daily work.

In order to accomplish the Department of Surgery mission, we have created the following objectives:

  1. Create a physical and social environment, which represents and supports individual differences and an inclusive workplace

  2. Provide education, training, and support to improve cultural competency and to promote inclusion

  3. Create innovative methods to raise cultural awareness and foster collaboration and communication in safe environments

  4. Develop meaningful, ongoing assessments that demonstrate efforts for continuous and strategic improvement of our current workplace culture

  5. Promote and sustain wellness and mental health so that our faculty, staff and learners can be most effective and fulfilled

  6. Strengthen connection, collaboration, and outreach across disciplines and with the surrounding community

  7. Support mechanisms that ensure transparency and accountability from the institution, leadership, and one another

Together Against Racism

The Department of Surgery at Michigan Medicine is dedicated to the safety of all patients, families, employees, and learners who come into our hospitals and clinics. We strive to be an anti-racist institution that is dedicated to supporting policies and practices aimed at eliminating health disparities, improving access to care for all communities, and building a culture that ensures safety and a sense of belonging for everyone. We stand together against intolerant or disrespectful behavior and condemn racism in any form.

Culture Crew

The Culture Crew is a group of faculty members, residents, and staff that regularly meets to discuss Department of Surgery culture. Task teams focus on specific initiatives to enhance the environment including:

  • Recruiting for Diversity: A standard operating procedure to recruit and maintain a vibrant Department of Surgery faculty and ensure all individuals across differences in race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and sexual orientation have full opportunity to advance in our department
  • Cultural Complications: Dedicated time and curricula to address and discuss cultural competency, patient and provider relations, trainee experiences
  • Mission & Vision Planning: Crafting purpose with intention and evaluation to adapt to evolving priorities
  • Assessment: Using a variety of instruments and data sources to measure culture, identify areas of improvement, and collaborate with other teams to meet the needs of the Surgery community
  • Training: Facilitation and delivery of trainings including Bystander, Upstander, Implicit Bias, mental health and wellness, high performance teams
  • COMPASS: A surgery peer support network trained by the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resiliency to provide confidential emotional support from a place of shared experience during difficult or adverse events
  • Michigan Action Progress System: A peer-to-peer process to provide informal, ad hoc education when addressing mistreatment or unprofessional behavior
  • #WeAreUmichSurgery: A printed and digital showcase to make visible the rich diversity of surgeon phenotypes in the department to raise awareness of the depth and breadth of our expertise
  • Book Club: Creating dedicated space for continual learning and connection through investigation and discussion of culturally relevant and inclusive texts and topics

The Culture Crew holds town halls for faculty, trainees, and staff to come together to discuss topics related to culture in the Department of Surgery. In addition to discussing recent events, Culture Crew task teams present recent work they have been developing.

Environment Toolkit

The Department of Surgery Culture Crew has created an Environment Toolkit, an evolving collection of statements and policies which provides a framework for environment-related best practices. The toolkit includes a Patient Bias Protocol and the Michigan Action Progress System (MAPS), which provides informal, peer-to-peer education when addressing mistreatment or unprofessional behavior.

Michigan Promise Grand Rounds Lecture Series

The Department of Surgery has established a grand rounds series focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion through the Michigan Promise. This series brings in high-profile speakers from throughout the country, specializing in topics specific to surgery as well as other related fields such as criminal justice. This series also includes the annual Asa Yancey Lecture series, established in honor of Dr. Asa Yancey.