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You’ve probably been hearing a lot about just culture, especially if you work in HR. But before we can guide you to developing a just culture within your organization, we first need to define what a just culture is.

According to experts, these are the parameters of a just culture

Chains. Links. Handshakes.

Legos. Puzzle pieces. Gears.

If you’ve ever visited a healthcare website—and healthcare recruiting sites, in particular—these are some of the most common images you’ll see. Just take a look at ours.

But what is it that they all have in common?

Hospital revenues are declining, costs are increasing and forecasted volumes are shrinking.

The Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act of 2010 focused attention on eliminating waste in the system. This law also mandated reductions in Medicare payments. As we all know, the shift to value-based payments will focuses on outcomes rather than episodes of treatment and testing.

Maintaining and increasing operating margins over the long term requires daily attention and decisive action in managing revenues and controlling expenses. To be blunt, all of us on the provider side of healthcare must change the way they do business.

In the short term, providers can take several actions to improve margins. These include…

You run a successful healthcare organization.

Patients are happy, teams are happy, and the employee retention rate has never been better.

Sound too good to be true? That’s because, for many of you, it probably is. Let’s just be honest. For most of us, the above vision might not be reality just yet, and you might be discovering that an improved employee retention rate is more difficult to achieve than it sounds.

Difficult? Yes. Crucial? Absolutely. Easy? Well, maybe not.

“Good morning!”

“Good morning!”

“How are you?”

“Great, and you?”

“Can’t complain!”

This employer/employee interaction is probably familiar to you. As a busy leader and executive, it can be easier to have these quick conversations with your employees, before isolating yourself to your office for the rest of the day, while your employees do the same.

According to one study, between 2006 and 2010, the nursing profession grew 7%, making it one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States.

And thank goodness this profession is growing so rapidly, as these individuals are crucial to improving the quality, efficiency and safety of healthcare. As healthcare is shifting to a value-based model, with a focus on quality of care, the role nurses play is becoming even more significant. In fact, nurses also play a heightened role in patient experience, as it’s a well-known fact that they tend to spend more direct time with patients than other employees, including physicians.

Are you feeling mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted? Have you been isolating yourself, both from others as well as from life in general? Have you lost sight of the meaning and accomplishment in your work? Have you lost your optimism, humor and hope?

If you said yes to any of the above symptoms, you might be suffering from what experts refer to as compassion fatigue, an incredibly common form of secondary traumatization among healthcare workers.

Managers do things right, but leaders do the right things.

We’ve written a good bit about the traits and characteristics a good leader should have, but what does a leader really look like?

It’s what’s on the inside that counts, but here are a few things to look for when picking out the leader in the room (or, better yet, being the leader in the room).

With the cold fronts and lower-than-normal temperatures, it’s hard to believe that it’s spring, let alone that we are already well into April. But we are, which means that the first quarter of 2016 is already behind us!

Here were 6 of the most newsworthy stories circulating the healthcare industry from January to March