Wellstar Honors the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This month Wellstar Health System announced it is extending its partnership with Moth+Flame to further utilize its virtual reality (VR) training technology throughout the enterprise.

Moth+Flame is an award-winning VR communication technology developer and premier enterprise-grade immersive learning provider offering innovative and adaptive learning programs for mastering technical and cognitive skills. Their platform includes content focused on emotional intelligence. When learners put on their headsets, they inhabit and interact with immersive simulated environments. They decide in the moment how to respond and see for themselves the impact their words and decisions have on others — and reflect on how to improve. Trainees receive an empathy rating score at the end of their session.

Last May, Catalyst by Wellstar led Wellstar’s first-ever VR-based leadership development training in collaboration with Moth+Flame. This was Moth+Flame’s first healthcare partnership, and the use of this technology continues to expand within Wellstar’s enterprise.

Following the training, 97% of participants recommended the virtual learning experience to others. They also reported that the training reduced their anxiety around difficult conversations by 57%. As a result of the successful pilot, Wellstar decided to offer VR emotional intelligence training regularly.

“We believe strongly that immersive learning is the future of learning and builds more confidence through practice,” said Kevin Cornish, CEO and founder at Moth+Flame. “Using virtual reality puts you inside of a difficult conversation and gives you a chance to learn in a safe simulated environment.”

The VR emotional intelligence training encourages Wellstar’s employees to build composure and gain practical experience in a highly realistic scenario by navigating difficult conversations and testing resiliency in an emotionally charged environment. This experience helps Wellstar’s workforce develop strategies to build situational awareness and prioritize composure, critical thinking and conscious emotional responses when engaging in triggering conversations.

By gaining conversational expertise and knowledge, Wellstar’s team will know how to respond in real scenarios with the confidence to interact appropriately and strategically.

“The realism within Moth+Flame's VR experiences, from using real-life actors, dramatically increases the emotional connection to the content and helps learners retain the information they learn. We are grateful for Moth+Flame's partnership in helping introduce VR to our leaders,” said Steven LeClercq, executive director of learning and onboarding at Wellstar Health System.

This use of innovation keeps Wellstar on the leading edge of training and team development, and the organization will continue to explore use cases for this technology within a clinical setting.

Wellstar Health System announced today that The Joint Commission recognized Wellstar North Fulton Medical Center as a Comprehensive Stroke Center, the most demanding stroke certification recognizing hospitals that have specific abilities to receive and treat the most complex stroke cases. With two of the eight Comprehensive Stroke Centers in Georgia, Wellstar Health System now offers stroke patients greater access to the highest level of stroke and aneurysm care. Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center is also Joint Commission certified as a Comprehensive Stroke Center.

“For years, we have provided world-class stroke care for each and every patient when they need it most. This designation represents how hard we have worked to provide the very best quality care for patients in North Fulton County and across Georgia. We’re proud that our work and subsequent positive patient outcomes are being recognized,” said Dr. Michael Mendoza, medical director of the Stroke Program at Wellstar North Fulton.

Wellstar North Fulton’s certification allows more Georgians to have access to the most advance diagnostics and treatments for cerebrovascular disease such as stroke. This is important because Georgia is located in the Stroke Belt, which is comprised of 11 states in the Southeast where the associated mortality rate for stroke patients is 10 percent above the national average.

At Wellstar North Fulton and Wellstar Kennestone, patients have access to advanced diagnostics and therapies to care for even the most complicated strokes faster and more effectively. These include:

• Neuro Intensive Care Units –  A multidisciplinary team of physicians and nurses who specialize in neurocritical care.
• Minimally-invasive treatment – Wellstar is one of only four programs in the state that offer neuroendovascular treatment, such as minimally-invasive clot retrieval, patients can be provided with a much less invasive treatment technique.
• Cutting-edge imaging – Neurointerventional biplane imaging shows detailed, 3D views of blood vessels in the brain. This allows neurosurgeons to flip neuroendovascular cases to an open neurosurgical case when needed.
• Pioneering technology – Wellstar North Fulton was among the first hospitals in the country to use the groundbreaking Artemis Neuro Evacuation device to treat brain bleeds, a condition that was nearly impossible to treat in the past.
• Around-the-clock care – Artificial intelligence such as VizAi allows quicker identification of patients who are candidates for thrombectomy and organizes care in a connected system by quicker response to identify and provide care as quickly as possible.

“Our team of neurosurgeons, neurocritical care physicians, neuroradiologists, advanced practice practitioners and nurses work together to perform world-class thrombectomies, aneurysm treatments, carotid surgeries and cerebral bypass procedures so that patients can regain their best quality of life. Additionally, our dedicated hybrid neurovascular suite is equipped with innovative bi-plane technology. This allows neurosurgeons to view highly detailed images of brain vessels, so we as a team can customize treatments in real time,” said Dr. Arthur Grigorian, neurosurgeon, Wellstar North Fulton.

“When you have a stroke, every second counts. Getting fast, expert stroke care can mean the difference between life, death, or lasting brain damage. We are proud to receive this prestigious certification at Wellstar North Fulton, informing the surrounding community that they don’t have to go far to receive the best treatment possible. We will continue to work hard to provide an interdisciplinary, innovative, and compassionate approach to safe and quality comprehensive stroke care to all the communities we serve,” said Jon-Paul Croom, president, Wellstar North Fulton and senior vice president, Wellstar Health System.

Wellstar is a leading provider of stroke and aneurysm services in Georgia and performs one of the highest numbers of thrombectomy and aneurysm treatments in the country. The Joint Commission is a United States-based nonprofit organization that accredits more than 22,000 healthcare organizations and programs.

Healthcare professionals are trained to work with science, data and facts. But when the pandemic hit, leaders had to grapple with working through the unknown. According to Jill Case-Wirth, senior vice president and chief nurse executive of Wellstar Health System, core tenets of leadership, such as communication, courage, and the ability to establish trust, remained constant, while other characteristics moved more clearly into focus in 2020.

“Humility rose to the forefront,” Case-Wirth said. “You had to be comfortable being able to say, ‘I don’t know, but together we’re going to figure this out … and we’re going to do the best that we can with the information we have available.’”

“We learned a lot of things during COVID about leading differently that we shouldn’t let go of now,” she said.

Case-Wirth shared that data analytics is one of those growth areas for today’s healthcare leaders. Having the ability to review data, gain consensus on the insights, and then quickly develop a plan for an actionable change management strategy is essential for future successful leaders. As a registered nurse, Case-Wirth also places an imperative on planning for the future of nursing, pioneering a career pathway program that starts as young as middle school. In addition to partnering with local universities and technical colleges, she emphasized the importance of being “thoughtful that we have these programs in diverse communities” to reach a wide student population and grow a diverse workforce for the future.

Listen to more insights on Healthcare Executive Podcast.

Case-Wirth was also featured among other healthcare leaders in the article “Leadership for Intense Times” in the November/December issue of Healthcare Executive Magazine.