10/9/22

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to, or watching Radio Maine today. It is my great pleasure to speak with John Foley, Sherman, who is an inpatient experience advisor to a health organization, and also a career communicator. And I believe that's just, uh, a few things that, we could suggest that you are in your, in your professional life, John. So I'm, I'm hoping that you'd be willing to expand upon that further with us today. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Sure, of course. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I appreciate your willingness to jump in and be part of the Radio Maine experience considering that you're working in your regular job today in the hospital. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I am at the hospital today and we're not in Maine. I'm in Pennsylvania. But when I was told about you and this program, I always enjoy learning more about people's experiences with healthcare. So fire away, let me know what you want to hear.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, John, I guess I'm interested in how you got to where you are, because when I look at all of your qualifications, it's, uh, you go from Middlebury to a degree from a French educational system to a PhD at Northwestern. You have a background in drama you've written about phenomenology and performance. Uh, you, I mean, it, it would be,it would be trying to condense things down too much to just say that you are an inpatient experience advisor. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

No, I mean, of course,  what I most feel like, and what is most important to me most days is being a father and a husband. My professional journey has been, there 's been somethingI feel like I've had several careers. Most of my adult life has been spent in the world of theater. So I did go to Middlebury. I got a degree in theater, in political science. I worked mostly as an actor in Washington, DC. I had a day job working as a temp and I got to work at the world bank at the IMF. I wound up settling at Gensler, which is the world's largest architecture firm.and then I went to study for two years in Paris at L'École  and that was an extraordinary experience. I always say to people, if you can ever arrange to be 26 and in love in Paris, I highly recommend it. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I came back from there to Chicago, where I started a theater company and I made theater and dance theater for about 10 years. And during that time, I did get my PhD, at Northwestern and I started teaching and came out to Pennsylvania to teach here and found myself wanting to be back in the professional environment. I had gotten to work for a genius communications consultant named David Grossman in Chicago, just an extraordinary man, a great practice. I learned so much working with him and I wanted to, I wanted to get back into that kind of an environment. So I moved to a couple of places, but I realized after spending several years as a consultant, that it was important to me to work for a mission driven organization.and there was a door that opened at this health system that didn't lead to a room that I wanted to stay in, but it allowed me to get in the building. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

And so I did that and now I am on the experience team and I absolutely adore my team and I love the work that I do.I never thought I would be saying things like, you know, statistically predictable variation if you had told me that would be something I would say when I was in college, I would have laughed but here we are, I'm looking at patient experience data and also, getting out and the most meaningful part of the work for me for sure is,  shadowing nurses and PTCAs and seeing the absolutely extraordinary work they do taking care of people and, and trying to improve their experience as well. So the experience advisors typically are responsible for patient experience, but we all know that staff experience comes first. So a lot of what I wind up doing is just providing staff with support and I'm someone they can talk to. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

And then I can bring their concerns to, to people who can actually do something about it.but my whole career, I would say, has been dedicated to helping people become their best selves. And I've tried to do this as a teacher of theater. I tried to do it as an advisor. I co-edited a book on phenomenology and, and performance, but I also wrote a book on the ethics of attention and that's something that's very important to me, how we attend to other people, how we allow other people to be strange to us instead of known to us.and that is something that I bring into my work as an advisor, as I observe people and I share what I see with others. I think I'm still constantly driven by this desire to help people be the best versions of themselves and ultimately to make the world, uh, a more astonishing place. That's very important to me, even in the work that I'm doing in front of a spreadsheet. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So the idea of being with people in this place of strangeness, tells me a little bit more about that. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Well, my general belief is that it is not possible to fully comprehend anything,  from a strictly phenomenological or perceptual basis. We can never see all of a thing, at once. And people are the same. People are no different. We are parts of me that can be attended to by other people, but not all of me. And my hope is that we can make a virtue of that instead of saying, well, this is a failure to really know everything there is about this person. We accept that in any encounter we have with another person, there is a creative element. There is a story that we unfold or that we find in the encounter with another person. And that allows for us to let the other person be astonishing to us, to decenter us so that we aren't, we aren't at the center of our own story. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

We can share that center with another person. It can be between people and that happens best. I believe when I allow you to be someone who I know something about, and, and I can have whatever feelings I have about, about those parts of you that I understand, but that I also honor the fact that you are bottomless mysterious to anybody. And I'm not trying to fix that. I'm trying to respond creatively to that in a way that enlarges everyone's experience of each other. So it's, it's, it's not something you can do all the time. You would never move if you allowed everyone to be truly astonishing to you or everything to be truly astonishing to you. And so part of this, this ethics is living in failure. I fail to do this constantly, but my choices are hopefully, always about where I can try to do this.while acknowledging that I can't always attend to everybody the way I would want to,I do have to make choices and those, those are part of how I make it through the day.but it's allowing myself to be mindful that I am making that choice. If I don't attend to you completely, I'm not gonna, I shouldn't pretend that I have, and I should accept the consequences of not having done. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think what you're describing is really so important, particularly in today's culture in today's workplace, because we have,  fortunately, moved to a place of greater inclusivity and bringing people into our space that don't look exactly the way we do or experience life exactly the way that we do. And at the same time, I think that there's an ongoing struggle with the idea of the otherness and the idea that you bring someone in, who may not be like you, and because you can't fully comprehend them or their life, they still cause you to feel discomfort. So this possibility that each of you could be strange to the other person, and you could still be respectful of each of your experiences, I think is really very important. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

You know, I haven't specifically put this idea into a, you know, a diversity equity and inclusion framework, but I do think it, it can, it can live there. And I am on the DEI council here at the hospital. And I can tell you, it is definitely, there's, there are definitely tensions around trying to break down the barriers to diversity because we are a diverse society, we just haven't allowed power to be shared diversely, frankly.even when we talk about inviting people into spaces, well, that's a power like who owns the space, who gets to welcome someone in, who is the, we, when you say that, you know, you're not, you don't look like us, who's the us there but I think that it is important to, say that I think this is part of the, part of the work of, of a DEI activism is to acknowledge we are different. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

We're not saying that we're all the same, that we have all the, we, we have the same experiences.and what we do have in common may ultimately be the ability to not just tolerate, but celebrate the fact that we have different experiences and that we, we do come from different places. And at a certain point, you need to have, I believe we need to have a shared language. I'm not very tolerant of intolerant people and I personally struggle with people who are dismissive of this idea, that diversity, because it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has been proven in many contexts scientific and philosophical to be something that is a strength.there are many people who reject that idea for complex reasons of their own.and I'm sure I could have more patience with those people.but at the end of the day, I think you're right that, some important work for, for anyone who's part of an institution is to continue to increase access to that institution and to honor the differences that are going to come into it as a result, instead of trying to say, well, we know what this is, and, and we've got you, we've got you figured out.none of us ever really gets to do that, on a personal level. Anyway, 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You raise a great point about the language and even the idea of allowing and, you know, who is the one doing the inviting and who has dominance over the space and, you know, what does it mean if, if someone else is the other, then you've already created a, a construct around the idea that someone is kind of the one who has the right to be in a place. And, and yet this is something that I think is relatively late to the conversation, because I still think we are saying things like allow others to have a voice, and who's allowing whom and, and what does that even look like? So even trying to understand the fundamentals of all of this, I think has been profoundly discomforting to many people, myself included. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

And I, you know, I used to teach full time and I used to tell students, if you feel uncomfortable in this class, that is not a sign that something has gone wrong. That may be you learning something, you are literally seeing things differently. And that, that often feels uncomfortable. You're letting go of what, you know. So don't think that if you have, if you're uncomfortable in here that you've had a bad day, that might, that might be your best day this week.I'm very invested in this idea and as a, someone who was making art for a while,I never shied away from a room where I didn't know what was happening.but you have to be comfortable. You have to learn that to be comfortable with the discomfort. You have to be able to trust that that can be productive, because obviously there's many different kinds of discomfort, and some of them are extremely unhealthy and need to be, uh, we need to protect ourselves, but, it's part of what I find. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

So, so frustrating about the, some of these laws that are being passed in Florida and Indiana and Texas that are making it illegal to teach American history, if it makes anyone uncomfortable on account of one of their identities. And it just seems very strange to me if I'm learning about American history as a white man, why wouldn't I be embarrassed and ashamed of parts of our history? I think it's absolutely appalling to believe that I wouldn't be, and I'm not invested in my feelings in a particular way. I'm invested in my understanding things better so that I can help continue to improve my environment or my relationships.but obviously there are people who are, who, who, who don't share that belief, but I really am committed to that idea that, certainly in matters of power and it matters, dealing with race.I would never expect to have growth without discomfort. I would never expect to make progress without feeling strange or uncomfortable. And,I wouldn't, I would also hopefully not prioritize my own comfort. I think this is something that we've seen a lot of where people empower people who are hold, you know, the owners of spaces, they prioritize their own wellbeing over everyone else's, and that they're not wrong to, to pay attention to their wellbeing, but, it's often not, not what's most important to attend to 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Even the idea that any of us has a particular right to something like comfort is, is a fascinating concept that,I mean, is it because, uh, we live in the United States and that we're used to a certain level of comfort that we believe that we now have a right to that comfort. I mean, I think there's so much that can be said around that idea. And, and yet I understand why we gravitate to that. I understand why we want to feel secure, that we feel like it's our basic right to not have dissonance in our lives, but it's a weird idea cuz not everywhere has access to comfort. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

But I do think that it comes from a desire that may be universal, which is for care.I think we know that life is that and life is impossible without care. Every infant needs to be cared for. And even, even an infant who doesn't receive as much care as someone might want for their survival, depends on the attention and care of someone else. And I think at the heart of that, I think what carries forward into our lives from that is a desire to be cared for and be attended to. And, I think there's some pretty good research on how people who feel like they're part of a team, people who feel like they have someone to care for who can, and, and someone who cares about them, these people are happier, they're more productive. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I think the, the, the challenges to accept that being cared for may feel like a different thing depending on the situation you're in.but the, we've definitely seen, during the American response to the COVID pandemic, that there are significant portions of the country who are not willing to inconvenience themselves in order to protect the health of their community.and I think that has less to do with comfort and more to do with, as I think you were kind of gesturing towards, ideology or, or belief, about their individual worth or the possibility of being an independent being. I find this to be frankly, quite bizarre that anybody who lives in society would imagine themselves to be independent.you know, I just, I don't get it. And, the idea of bodily autonomy, I find, I mean the air that I breathe, I don't choose the air that I breathe. The air that I breathe is as clean as the people that I elect allow it to be.and it will be as dirty as the people who are, you know, running factories are allowed to let it be.that's not that's, I don't ha I don't, I literally don't get to choose the air. I breathe.so how can I imagine that I'm an independent agent or that I have total Liberty?anyway, 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I do think that what you're describing in this basic impulse toward feeling cared for is important for us all to understand about other people, because it's hard for me to know what that might look like for someone else. And maybe someone else who doesn't share my ideology, has a different sense of what their needs are in order to achieve that level of care. So it's it. I think it can sometimes be very frustrating because it feels like we're so far apart in the way that we look at the world. And yet, if we can acknowledge that there is this at its core, there is a sense of this need as you've described for care in order to really have basic survival needs met. So I think it, it provides us for a means of having compassion for those that maybe we don't really understand at least ideologically, 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Hopefully. I mean, we, in on our team, we often are talking to providers about, motivational interviewing technique because a lot of providers are still attached to the information deficit model of communication, which as you must know, is a very outdated way of understanding how to change people's behavior.and I think what we are often trying to do is to find out what is important to the person we're talking to, and to try to link that to any change that we wanna see in them, or, you know, we are the, a meeting that I just came from was with some, nurse leaders who are trying to improve, intentional, hourly rounding at the hospital. And this is a huge challenge at the best of times with the national staffing crisis that we have with nurses and PTCAs. It's an incredible challenge. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

And when you add to that, that there's a staffing problem with environmental services and with food services and the nursing team generally is the ones who are asked to pick up that slack, saying, did you get into every patient's room? This hour is something else. And in part because of that, but also because I don't really believe telling a nurse or a PTCA what to do is going to end well.we're trying to find out what they get out of it. What's important to you? What fills your cup as a nurse, as an aid, and have that conversation because we know it's gonna wind up with, well, guess what, if you can spend time in the room connecting with your patient, you get all of the above, but if we start out by saying, here's, you know, the process standard work, here's where you are in the skills matrix. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I don't know. There are people in the world who would probably be like, I cannot wait to fill in all four boxes of that skills matrix.I don't know that that's why any nurse walks into a room though.that's not, I don't think what they're getting out of it. I don't know what they're getting out of it. I need to have that conversation with them. They, I don't asses that all nurses want the same thing, but, you do need to find out what, you know, in, in the context of care, what does care feel like to you and, and how, how can you feel cared for by me, and then move from there but, you do need to ask and you do need to be available to the answer. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And that does take a commitment of energy, time, attention, that many people I know, feel pressured by, because especially in the field that you and I both work within healthcare is, is very numbers driven. You know, you have your productivity, your RVs, you know, everything is measured. And so you're often feeling like, okay, I have to tick all of these boxes. I have to have patient experience, quality productivity. You know, I have to get it all done and I have to do it with a smile on my face and make sure that, you know, everybody feels good about being on the team and that we're collaborating with the patients. And so I think it is easy to kind of fall into that trap of scarcity. I don't have enough to accomplish any of the above. And so when you take that into a patient conversation, or even a conversation with a colleague, then it's hard not to come across in a way that kind of promotes the idea of scarcity. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Absolutely but, I've taken to this term, toxic positivity are you familiar with this? 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Absolutely. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I do. I do like the idea that if you acknowledge your context, maybe you're not happy about that. Maybe you're not happy because of an institution's behavior or a system's behavior.I don't, it's true that if you're positive, it's true. If you think, if you think about things positively, if you make plans for the future, I mean, what is neuroplasticity? I mean, this is pretty well studied. That is gonna help you be happier. I loathe the idea that I am entirely responsible for my own happiness. I believe that how we respond to events is part of who we are.but I'm, I'm not alone in the world. I'm in a context. And if that context is repeatedly telling me that I'm worthless or that I'm not valued, I am, it is like not being happy with that is the healthy response. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

and healthcare is very numbers driven, and there's a good reason for that.but we are, you know, there's somebody who I I've, I've heard somebody say repeatedly, you know, I love data because data doesn't have feelings. And every time I have to, like my eyes start shooting to the back of my head, because, you know, are you a person looking at this data? Well then guess what, there are feelings did a person put these, this data together. They definitely had feelings about that data. There's no such thing as an objective viewpoint. We are people embedded in a world of incomplete perception and no one should believe that they are able to have an objective view of anything.I think in terms of how to, you know, keep hanizing healthcare, we have to just keep going back to, why are you in the room? 

Jon Foley Sherman:

What is, what is this gonna do for you? What do you get out of this?I love telling the story about an early meeting I had when I joined this team, I met with a doctor, who is the chair of the medicine department. And I said, how do you know you've had a good visit with the patient? When you're leaving the room, what does that feel like? And he said, I know I've had a good visit when I've touched their souls. And I thought, wow,  that? I mean, what if that was the, what if that was the bar? We asked people to clear it every time and I'm not even a religious person, but I love the idea that this, this person wasn't saying. I mean, he shared with me, you know, he's most worried that he's gonna, you know, he's got the diagnosis, right. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

But he knows that that's not the only work he's doing in the room. And if he only takes care of their condition and only treats their, you know, what ails them, but hasn't seen them as a person hasn't engaged with them as a person that that will be an unsuccessful visit, because you, as, as I'm sure, you know, when you succeed as a doctor, you are not, you are not solving a medical problem. You are improving somebody's life and you can't really expect to do that if you're not engaging them as a person and I  will always advocate for people to pursue that engagement and, you know, keep your numbers in tidy and show me the, show me the data but show, show me the data, show me as a person. Don't talk to me as if I'm gonna process it. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

And don't expect that I'm going to look at you that way either. I will always allow people to have emotion and I always feel so bad when people say, I'm sorry, getting emotional and I'm like, I'm emotional all the time. Like you don't have to apologize for being emotional in front of me but, uh, I know, I know we have a lot of responsibilities and I'm not clinical those of you who are, you need to maintain a certain character, a certain play, a certain role for patients.but when we're dealing with each other, as colleagues, I think, it's pretty well established that engaging the whole person is, is the best way to have a productive team, to have an engaged team, and to get the most out of each other 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In our organization. One of the most important things that we do when we bring people in is to talk about patient experience and then moving on into people's professional careers.with the medical staff, the chief medical officer of the entire health system will actually sit down, one on one with each person who has been a medical staff member for a certain amount of time and discuss patient experience. And, and I think it's in the nature of, kind of helping people to understand the importance of this ongoing engagement and which is wonderful. And also, uh, I, one of my favorite people in our organization is our patient experience, head lead. And he is always so grateful that I try to read everything that he sends and all the comments and try to comment back most lead to him, but sometimes to a group. And I have the sense that the work he is doing is very challenging because it is not always valued by everyone, because it is sometimes seen as the softer side of things. And that I, that I always, I'm always very glad that he's grateful and simultaneously feel badly that that is the job that he has, that he feels not as valued as he probably should feel 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Well. It's great that you're that leadership that the CMO at your organization is having these regular conversations about patient experience. And for sure it can feel nice to have, because it is often tracked separately from other quality measures, but patient experience is a quality measure because if patients have better experiences, then they're more likely to be engaged with their health. And they're more likely to have better long term healthcare outcomes. So this isn't a cherry on top, and this isn't, I mean, there is a, there is a common misconception that patient experience in part, because when it first came into healthcare, it was called patient satisfaction. So there are a number of people who see it as, you know, smiles and unicorns and not, no, this is about engaging your patient. And if they feel treated as a person, they are probably gonna do a better job following their doctor's orders, taking their medications. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I also wanna say, and this is, this has been something that I've been doing a lot in the past couple of weeks.when you say that he, your, your, the patient experience lead feels, you know, is concerned that people think of experience as something soft.I know exactly what you mean. I just wanna start normalizing for everybody that the idea that something is weak because it is soft or that it is less valuable because it is soft.let's just make sure we are clear that that is part of what I would describe as talk toxic masculine culture, and that what is soft is sometimes best, sometimes most vital and most appropriate. And we do live in a, a, you know, a  overwhelmingly misogynist culture. And I know why people use it that way, but it always just makes me. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

I just always wanna say, Hey, can we just acknowledge that that is, that that's the world we're living in, but let's fight for a world where saying, this is a soft skill doesn't mean it's not gendered and it's not less valuable.but is actually, yeah, I, you know, that's the most important thing for you to have is this softness and this gentleness or this malleability, that those are, those are essential qualities in different contexts.so I apologize for getting up on a soapbox there, but I do that is something that I feel like I need to push because we, we hear it all the time and we all just kind of, we understand and we make do, but,I wanna, I don't wanna make due with that being how we, how we see things I wanna, I wanna push against that. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, on the off chance that this individual ever watches this or listens to this, I wanna be clear that he has never suggested to me the word soft. So that was me and I will, I will own that particular word. And I will also acknowledge that what you're saying is really very true. And, you know, in the work that I do, which is very qualitative and quantitative, I think that what we're seeing is the qualitative, side of things has been brought in as a way to recognize the importance of kind of demarginalizing people and demarginalizing voices, because sometimes the quote hard data actually has the opposite effect. If you're always dealing with the majority, then it gives you good information, but only about the majority. So again, just backing off a little bit, I don't want this person to be blamed for, for my word. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

No, no worries. And, no, no, no worries. And, and also, you know, In my place of discomfort, I am always interested in learning how people, and how words do impact us, because I, like you, am also a career communicator. And my construct has been mostly media on one side and medicine on the other. And even those two worlds are so far apart in the way that we use words, the way that we interact with people. And it's funny to float between the two sides. And then for me add in the academic side as well, because different things mean different things in different contexts. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Yes, for sure. I'm, uh, I'm married to an extraordinary woman who is trained as a social scientist. And at one point she was looking at how the way political science was measuring participation was producing a preordained picture of civic engagement and whether intentionally or not continuously, and, and pretty rigorously excluded a whole realm of activity that was mostly undertaken by women. And so the quantitative data was measured. It wasn't able to capture a complete picture, but everyone was satisfied with it because you had this, you know, you had these numbers and this is something in, in the experience world that we think about when we were measuring the patient experience. Most of the questions that are on the, the, government mandated survey that patients get are about suffering. If we ask how frequently did a doctor explain things in a way that you understood that is about their anxiety, if it's, did they listen? 

Jon Foley Sherman:

You know, how frequently did they listen to you carefully? That is about being seen as a person and not just a, symptom.but there are a couple of questions that people in suits tend to look at, which is likelihood to recommend and rate the hospital. But these are moved by things that we don't even measure.the reputation of the hospital being one thing, for example, if your hospital had a vaccine mandate for COVID, that will impact how people look at the hospital and no one's measuring that.but that doesn't mean that it's not driving it. So when we try to look at, well, what's driving the, you know, what's driving our scores, well, we can only call something a driver if we're measuring it. And something that may be moving us may be something that we're not measuring. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

So I think that is exactly part of, as you, as you're describing it, this kind of reorienting and enlarging our vision so that we understand, well, we, there are different kinds of data. That's not all the same. And our team is big on saying, don't be data driven, be data informed there's context. There's a lot going on beyond these numbers. you know, if you're looking at a unit's performance, do they have a new nurse manager? What is their operational vacancy rate right now?and what are, you know, are they do, are they fully staffed with food services, people, all of those things you would expect to impact patient experience, but if you're just looking at the one numbers you're gonna miss a lot, so we, we always try to make sure we're, we're enlarging people's vision, and taking in more than, more than just a number for, 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I feel like you and I could go down a whole other path of the introduction of bias into big data, but, not to mention how things are asked, but also how things are interpreted, but we'll save that for another day, because I know that in your busy schedule, you have other things to do, but before we go, I do want to kind of pull in the connection between you and art and the Portland art gallery, and kind of how we even came to know this person, John VO, Sherman, and bring him onto radio Maine. So, would you mind just giving me a little bit of background on the art connection for you? 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Sure. So, Linda, my wife and I have wanted for years to not collect art, but to have art in our home.one of the great joys that the two of us have as a couple, but also as parents.I, the happiest I've ever been in my life was the first day that my family and I went to D beacon, uh, which is an extraordinary muse in beacon, New York, that has some very large works of art and discovering art with my family is, is a, a great joy in my life.and so we wanted to have some art, art in our home, and we've struggled to find art that we, that we like, that we can afford.I don't wanna have a print of a painting. I wanna have the real painting so that, and, you know, we're, we, neither one of us makes a great amount of money, so our options are limited. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

And so we've, we've struggled to find what, what can work for us and we were on a family trip in Maine, and we had some time in Portland and she was with the kids somewhere else. And I went in and I thought, oh boy, I think there, I think we might have some possibilities in this, in this gallery, and that's never happened. I've never walked into a gallery and been like, wow, there's a couple of things in here that might work for us, both in terms of, I think Linda might like it.but also we can afford it.and so I went and got her and made sure we,we got to go, into the gallery and, the gallery does have this, this great little feature where they have, I don't know if of other people are doing this, I've not seen it, but they have the QR code by the artwork. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

So you can scan that, get it up on the, on your phone's browser. And then, you know, we were, we had other things to do with the rest of the family. So we left the gallery. But then when we, you know, later in the week we got back, uh, home and we could use the virtual feature to see it in your room, which is a fantastic innovation. And so we were able to do that and then, you know, communicated with the gallery about buying our first work of art, which it's too bad. I'm not at home. In the place that I normally sit for, virtual meetings are in our dining room, which is where we hung up the work.so this was our first time purchasing art like that. And it was, you know, we were very happy. We're very happy with it. And we'll probably continue to enjoy art, mostly muses, and in galleries, but hopefully this is the beginning of our, slowly adding to the art that's in our home. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I have a Matt Chamberlain piece behind me. It kind of is, in your honor, knowing that you couldn't be at your house with a piece of art behind you. So I'm doing that for the two of us. And I really do appreciate your willingness to, uh, have this conversation with me because I know that, you're not an artist. You're not trying to promote anything. You, we just asked you to be on our show and you said, okay, all right, I'll do that. And then, and I feel like I've learned a lot from you, so it's, it's really been a pleasure to talk with you today. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Well, I appreciate that and I definitely would probably have been less interested if I didn't know that you were in healthcare and that we might be able to have an interesting conversation about our shared work so I appreciate your hosting this and I'm very happy to give you the time. 

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you very much. I've been speaking with a career communicator and also an inpatient experience advisor. And I mean that with all the Mo utmost respect, John I'm, I'm not in any way making fun as, as a fellow career communicator, but I've been speaking with career communicator, John fully Sherman, and I really wish you all the best and the next time you're up in Maine, I hope you and I can connect. 

Jon Foley Sherman:

Absolutely.