Interview with Dr. Rachel Salas
“I’m convinced. I love it as a patient tool. I think it’s helping me provide better care and develop a better relationship with not only patients, but also with the staff. We’re starting to speak the same language.”
– Dr. Rachel Salas
Recently, I had the great pleasure of interviewing one of my clients, the brilliant Dr. Rachel Salas, a neurologist at the John Hopkins Medical Center for Sleep. While many people might think an assessment tool like CliftonStrengths has no place in hospitals or the world of physicians, it’s gaining steam as a way to forge stronger relationships with staff and to customize patient care. I sat down to talk to Dr. Salas about her first introduction to CliftonStrengths, how she overcame her initial skepticism, and why she believes it’s a crucial tool to not only connect with patients and staff, but to develop mentees and the healthcare staff of the future.
Q: When did you start using strengths?
A: It wasn’t until recently, back in 2017. I had never heard about it. In all of my training we’d never taken that assessment, nor did I know it even existed. The American Academy of Neurology had us take it for a leadership program and at first I was like, “What is this? What are they having us do?” but I like new things and I like to see what things are all about so I took it. I was impressed that this tool focused on what people are already good at. I hadn’t seen that before so I really liked that. I also really like that for the first time ever, we had a universal language for people to understand each other using the same words.
Q: How has strengths helped you improve your relationships in the medical field?
A: The whole reason I wanted to buy into strengths and bring it to Hopkins, my work, and now my practice, was because I wanted to connect quicker with people. In particular, I got into this because I wanted to have this as a tool for me to quickly and better connect with my student mentees. Most of the time it would take me about a year or so to get to know who they were and what their interests were. Now that I’m using strengths with them, I’m able to have deeper conversations about who they are and who they want to become.
Q: How do you use strengths with patients?
A: I never brought strengths in thinking I would use it with patients. I always thought I would use it with my students and with my team. For the past two years, I’ve held strengths workshops and had you come to Baltimore to lead those sessions with the students in my PreDoc program and facilitate the retreat with my staff. It was great to understand the students, who our staff is, and who works better with what. For instance, if you have a patient that is really upset, maybe they’re not feeling like they’re being heard. We have the people in the front lines who are high in Positivity, Empathy or Relator, and they can connect with patients quickly and get their buy-in. Using that as a tool with our staff to promote and enhance our care has been tremendous. I’ve started using strengths with my patients and it’s been very beneficial for developing our relationship.
Q: One of your strengths is Individualization. How do you think that helps you as a physician?
A: Individualization allows me to feel connected to my patients. I really look at the person I’m talking to and really want to know more about them. At first, I thought well maybe I’ll just use this with the insomnia patients. I thought maybe if my patient is an Achiever, they’re not able to fall asleep because they’re thinking about all of the things they still need to do. Maybe my Empathy patients are up worrying about things that have already happened or haven’t happened yet. When I started using it with them, I realized I wanted to use strengths with all my patients. I know if they’re high in Analytical or Input, then I know they’re going to need more proof and information. If I know that upfront, I can give them what they need and get their buy-in quicker and therefore customize their management plan.
Q: Speaking of which… do you actually have your patients take CliftonStrengths?
A: It’s still evolving. What I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks is for all of my new patients I’m putting it out there as an option. Sometimes I even think, “oh this person will probably not be interested in this.” We all have our biases. I offer it and they tell me stuff like, “Wow, no physician has ever said this to me before.” At the end of the day, even if they don’t get the code, I still feel like it’s helped our relationship. I’m in the process of trying to see how much interest there is with our patients and then how can I set it up so it can be more streamlined.
Q: Are you actively trying to spread strengths at John Hopkins?
A: It’s quickly snowballing. I think people are very interested. Medicine is moving toward precision medicine, like let’s treat the person in front of us. There’s a lot of pharmacode genomic perspective, but I’m trying to bring forward the importance of who the person is, what’s going on at home, and the other factors that could impact the evaluation or management of this patient. I think strengths would be a great way to do that. It already has me convinced.
Q: Physicians tend to be skeptical. What is your experience with this and introducing strengths?
A: I was the first skeptic. We weren’t trained with this kind of stuff. So for it to be presented to me in my mid-career, it’s easy for me to bring it up to people and for them to be like, “What is that?” I’ve had a little bit of that but the minute I tell them I’ve been certified as a CliftonStrengths coach and this is how I’m using it, then people are willing to listen. I convinced my colleague, another physician, and she’s planning to go get trained in May.
Q: What would be your vision for strengths and medicine?
A: When I think about how strengths could be beneficial to the field of healthcare, it’s really widespread. It can help develop the relationship between patients and healthcare team members. I think it’s very important for interprofessional, collaborative practice. The idea that physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, dietitians all of us, we all need to come together and work better as a team. I think strengths is a perfect tool to do that because it not only helps develop people who they are but also helps build better teams.
A big thank you to Dr. Salas for her time and invaluable insights! It’s an honor to work with her at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.