Exercise 2: 5 Unsolved Problems

[Joshua]

Exercise 2: 5 Unsolved Problems

Please post below your problems, solutions and reflections.

1. List five problems in a field of interest, identifying people it affects and the unwanted emotions it causes.

2. Write a rudimentary solution for each.

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 2

A list of five problems, clearly written in at most a few sentences each, plus a rudimentary solution for each, also in a sentence or two.

Field of Interest: Minimalism, decluttering, organization
1. Problem: Parents feel overwhelmed with managing their homes, which bleeds into their work and overall sense of satisfaction with life. Solution: Reducing inventory and reorganizing the home to support their flow of activity may help to increase efficiency in the home, making it feel like a restful place to be, and improving the flow of activity, freeing up bandwidth to work on higher level tasks.

2. Problem: Children under 12 feel overwhelmed by decision paralysis when it comes to toys, clothes, and memorabilia, often resulting in overattachment to their belongings. Solution: Highly simplifying a child’s most common environments leads to less decision-making fatigue and in turn, higher satisfaction. Leading parents through this process to support their kids, and then circling back with parents on the impact to their kids.

3. Problem: Teenagers feel emotionally and physically attached to belongings or to the action of acquiring trendy things in an effort to feel connected with their sense of self and identity that they are cultivating amongst their peers, but they may not truly feel confident in themselves and ultimately feel disconnected from others. Solution: Introducing a values exercise to teenagers on finding their core motivating values may help them to further understand themselves and re-evaluate the basis on which they connect with others.

4. Problem: Working professionals want to combat procrastination but often feel helpless or powerless to do so in keeping up with the grind of life. Solution: Reducing the number of things they need to do often frees up more time to do things that they have set on the back burner for a long time, eliminates unimportant problems, and unsuspectingly increases the efficiency of getting tasks done.

5. Problem: Women feel overwhelmed with household management and are disproportionately impacted by visual clutter, but often feel helpless, powerless, and alone in combatting the problem. Solution: Helping women to body double or find/obtain a body double in getting the ball rolling can help them gain agency in starting the onion peeling process of turning their environment into one that truly supports their flow of life.

6. Problem: Environmentally conscious adults who want to reduce their inventory may feel helpless at the lack of knowledge, lack of time, and lack of resources/accessibility concerning recycling or reducing/eliminating waste. Solution: Obtaining resources and proactively teaching the community about ways to reduce, reuse, or recycle items that are often clutter but are not commonly recycled or dealt with can improve accessibility of removing certain items for people in a way that is win-win for them and the environment.

Field of Interest: Relationships, self-awareness, loneliness

1. Problem: The retired and elderly often feel lonely in their older age as their time with themselves increase and their time with their family or others decreases. They may feel marginalized by their families or societies. Solution: Help them find or create the community that they want to be a part of and connect them with folks who could use their advice or company.

2. Problem: Single working professionals who move for work often feel lonely in a new place and can find it difficult to connect with folks locally or to create/find a sense of community. Solution: Teach people to invite others into their lives or proactively seek that which they are looking for.

3. Problem: Children feel frustrated when they are in conflict with other children. Solution: Help children practice the skill of identifying and naming their emotions and contextualizing situations with ‘When you, I feel’, as well as practicing the skill of asking affirmatively for what they want.

4. Problem: People who struggle with friendship feel misunderstood by others and disconnected from people in general. Solution: Introduce methods for ‘being a friend first’ – the three question method I cultivated with one of my best friends, exercising genuine curiosity and interest in others, and Brene’s Brown’s practice of empathy.

5. Problem: Working professionals often feel lonely and isolated when handling hard things. Solution: Introduce the best friend voice, Simon Sinek’s rule of ‘never crying alone’

Post-exercise Reflection

How hard was it to identify problems?
Soon after class, it seemed very easy for me to identify problems in the inventory management/minimalism/decluttering space. I was planning to post my homework within a day or two of class. However, I soon got stuck on my second topic. This is opposite of what happened with coming up with fields. My second field came to me before my first did. Yet again contrary to what I think would have happened, I almost feel like the secondary field has more variety and more robust ideas.

What’s fascinating is that during this week as I’ve been pondering these exercises, I caught up with my old 6th grade science teacher who once told me he had several friends leave the university he was working at when we had connected who started their own practical skills school or university. He’d mentioned in our last conversation in 2020 that he’d connect me with them on the premise of my involvement and work in financial literacy, but things got lost in the follow up. Reading the book and starting these exercises has led me to feel like initiative ought to be a life skill as much as financial literacy. I had reached back out to him in hopes to reconnect and follow up with those contacts. Out of nowhere, teaching initiative or creating curriculum seemed to appear as a third field of interest, but I am not restarting the process quite yet with this third field so I don’t amplify the quantity of homework I need to do each week. One could say I’m attempting to combat my tendency of filling my plate with more than I can chew.

Was it easy or hard to see them from the perspective of the people they affect?
I think it was relatively easy to see the problems from the perspective of the people they affect as I leaned on my own experiences and issues, as well as those I’d observed in people around me.

Did it get easier with practice?
Yes and no. I think practice and repetitions definitely help. Chewing on things for a while also helps.

Do you think your problems and solutions have much chance to become viable projects?
I’m unsure of how much a chance there is that these ideas will become viable projects. I’m giving my best effort to do the exercise without judging the ideas and trusting that the process will either help to refine the ideas or completely scrap them.

Miscellaneous reflection:
I feel like emotional awareness helps with minimalism/inventory management and environmental sustainability. I also feel that minimalism helps with cultivating emotional awareness. These fields feel interrelated to me. Throw in the idea of teaching initiative and in some ways I have a hard time feeling like I can separate out these topics because of how interdependent they feel to me.

On RJ’s sharing:
In retrospect of hearing RJ’s talk now almost a week ago as I write this, I think what stood out to me the most were two things. One was that he, like other alumni, also felt way more empowered after finishing the class. Two was that not only did he have a successful project that he saw through to completion, he also decided to terminate the project after a certain point. I believe his experience points to the idea that it’s okay to succeed and end something that was good, just as it’s okay to fail at something and leave it be. I think both can be fears that cripple people from taking action.

[Hayden Kessinger]

The exercise

Before I list my problem-solution pairs, I want to clearly state that my chosen field of interest is often associated with anger, righteousness, ridicule, judgment, and a bunch of other less-than-ideal emotions. My intention is to simply state problems that I see. My statements related to the treatment of animals may seem extreme or silly, but I am simply speaking about the reality of our food system. My statements about people are generalizations and not necessarily true for everyone in the group that I describe. I hope to inspire meaningful reflections and create conversations, not arguments.

Human problems related to animal welfare:

Problem: Most people feel tension (and the emotions listed above) when discussing animal welfare and find it difficult to talk about.

Solution: Have more difficult and uncomfortable conversations about animal welfare! Perhaps through a podcast or simply by chatting with people.

Problem: People who eat animal products feel guilt, judgement, and resistance when spoken to about the animal agriculture industry.

Solution: Help guide people to make consumer choices that reflect their values. This could also be through a podcast, similar to Sustainability Simplified. I could do the Spodek Method, animal edition.

Problem: Animal advocates feel hopeless about improving the lives of farmed animals.

Solution: Expose more people to the amazing work that is already being done for animals, what they can do, and the potential for huge change in the future.

Problem: Animal advocates feel lonely and different from others. They can struggle to connect with friends and family.

Solution: Create an animal advocate social network. It could be a slack channel (like Hive) where people can chat about a variety of topics, related and unrelated to animals.

Problem: Slaughterhouse workers and farmers feel trapped in their jobs that exploit animals. They want to treat them better but the demand for animal products makes higher animal welfare impossible.

Solution: Work with farmers to transition to a more just and sustainable business. Or decrease demand for animal products somehow (work for alternative protein company, create culture that views plants as primary food source)

Animal problems related to animal welfare:

Problem: Animals feel pain and suffering when they cannot escape poor conditions on farms.

Solution: Improve conditions on farms so animals feel less or no pain and suffering.

Problem: Dairy cows feel grief when farmers take their calves away from them immediately after birth.

Solution: Change the standard practice of separating mothers and calves. Make it illegal to separate them.

Problem: Pigs feel fear when they’re forced through the slaughterhouse to the kill floor.

Solution: Change the slaughterhouse standard design and practice to make the experience less horrific.

Problem: Factory farmed animals (99% of animals raised for food) suffer immensely their entire lives.

Solution: Work to create stricter animal welfare standards that do not allow for animals raised for food to live on factory farms.

Problem: Farm animals want to live normal, healthy lives.

Solution: Remove animals from the food system!

Exercise reflections

This exercise was more challenging than I anticipated. Thinking of the problems was easy. The hard part was choosing which problems to focus on and making them specific. At first, I also struggled to think of problems from the perspective of the group that is experiencing them, as well as the specific emotions involved. Though it’s a slight shift, changing the language to reflect the group instead of projecting my own idea of the problem onto them, made a big difference. I’m sure I’m still projecting some with the problems I chose, but I’m learning how to prioritize the problem to then find a solution. There are a lot of solutions that I want to find problems for. I’m seeing that that is misguided, ineffective, and honestly quite arrogant and disrespectful.

I benefited from getting started early in the week and letting my thoughts simmer for a few days, jotting down new ideas every once in a while. I think I did a decent job brainstorming rudimentary solutions that could turn into real action, especially for the human-centered problems. Identifying problems centered on farm animals is extremely easy because there are so many, however finding a specific solution for each is more difficult. Somehow, it feels more abstract. I called on the help of others, asking for ideas from people in the Hive community (an organization that I could maybe emulate in a slightly different way to fill a gap in the movement) which was very helpful.

Last class, we met a former student named RJ. Through the class (he took it at NYU), he took a huge idea of helping Gaza, and made it real. He founded and directed a non-profit called LEAD Palestine for three years. Though he and his team decided to end the program in 2018, it seemed like it made a positive impact on the youth that they served. Below is a description from RJ’s LinkedIn.

“LEAD Palestine is an initiative that aims to inspire, motivate, and empower the next generation of Palestinian youth. Working in collaboration with local organizations, community centers, and university students, we will offer young Palestinians one-on-one mentorship and a fun, hands-on, leadership-based summer program where they will develop a sense of their own capacities and acquire the necessary skills to solve the problems they face. We believe that everyone has the potential to be a leader, and we want to cultivate that potential. We want every child to know that they are capable, talented, and cared for by positive mentors they can look up to.”

I haven’t done much other research on LEAD Palestine, so I can’t say one way or another that it was an effective program. I only know what RJ and Josh shared with us. I’m not doubting it was positively impactful, I’m only pointing out that just because an idea or program sounds good, doesn’t mean it is. But for the purpose of this workshop, it was cool to hear from someone who truly made something happen. RJ took a massive idea and created a tangible program, working on the problems he cared about.

It was encouraging to hear that RJ was considering revisiting the program, too. It was also encouraging to hear the way the course ignited his passion and made him excited to do all the exercises. He talked about staying after class to chat with Josh and other students, working out kinks in their ideas. Outside of creating a project, RJ shared how taking the course made him a better salesman at his family business; he became a natural people person, connecting with each potential customer rather than trying to push products on them. If improving my social skills is all I gain from this course, I’ll be pretty happy.

[Beth]

Initiative Class

Week #2 Assignment

1. People feel discouraged and overwhelmed by the trash in the street
Solution: Grow hubs of Merida pride centered at schools, churches, businesses, service organizations that each take on a given area over which to be stewards

2. People who live here feel hopeless to change the trash situation in Merida.
Solution: Create an event that is city wide to focus on all of us taking pride in our city and cleaning it up

3. Foreigners feel afraid to try to do anything because they are visitors here
Solution: Partner with local people to have an event that engages many communities and includes local ideas and strategies.

4. People who throw trash on the ground don’t appear to feel badly about throwing trash in the street.
Solution: Start a school program or project that utilizes the enthusiasm of young people to participate and to grow pride in their ability to care for their surroundings

5. People feel angry about nothing being done to clean up Merida and to keep it clean
Solution: Partner with local leaders to establish a community message and norm of clean and happy streets.

Reflections

1. How hard was it to identify problems?
I found it a bit tricky to identify the five different problems around the topic, but I think the five I came up with have a little different focus because of who the problem is being felt by. I began with an idea of A problem, trash in the street. Having to come up with 5 problems made me think in a fuller way of what the problem is and why it is a problem.

2. Was it easy or hard to see them from the perspective of the people they affect?
This was not easy for me when I started because my norm is to think of the problem as one of “trash”. It was a good exercise to look for WHO is this a problem for and WHY is it a problem for them. One of my identified problems is that there are those for whom this is NOT a problem, which may be a bit of a cheat, but to me seems valid. One part of the problem is that there are a large number of people who don’t have any thought about dropping their garbage on the street.

3. Did it get easier with practice?
Clearly, once I started thinking about WHY I think this is a problem and to WHOM, my thoughts changed from just being something I don’t like. What I didn’t address for lack of knowing exactly how to address it is how the trash is a problem for the health of the environment. Lots of what is left on the streets ultimately ends up in the ocean, is attractive to rodents, is potentially dangerous to the health of birds, but that seems a broader and more complicated issue. I felt like maintaining a simpler focus would help me determine actions.

4. Do you think your problems and solutions have much chance to become a viable project?
I do! Thinking of it in this way helped me look at who would have an interest in such a project and what would motivate them to do so. I have ideas for people who I think would be interested.

[Evelyn Wallace]

Exercise 2: Five Problems and Remedial Solutions

Problem 1: Student social workers feel limited by the social work curriculum as outlined
Solution 1: Sustainable leadership coursework is added to social work curriculum

Problem 2: School-age children in the U.S. feel anxious that the grownups do not, in fact, have everything under control
Solution 2: Sustainable leadership activities are offered to school-age kids through after-school programs or workshops

Problem 3: People using social media feel dissatisfied with the amount of time they spend online
Solution 3: Sustainability leadership workshop (or other offering) is designed specifically for social media “addicts”

Problem 4: Singles looking for connection feel conflicted about or resistant to using dating apps
Solution 4: Sustainability leadership workshop (or other offering) is designed specifically for singles

Problem 5: Small business owners (in La Grande, anyway) feel overworked and view sustainability as an important thing they can’t afford or don’t have time for
Solution 5: Sustainability leadership workshop (or other offering) is designed specifically for small business owners

Reflections:
• How hard was it to identify problems?
• Was it easy or hard to see them from a perspective of the people they affect?
• Did it get easier with practice?
• Do you think your problems and solutions have much chance to become viable projects?

At first I found myself feeling somewhat frustrated… with Josh specifically. Like “why do you always put all these silly constraints on things, JOSH??? Why can’t I just explain like a normal person what a problem is? Or better yet, why do I even have to name a problem? Why can’t I just do the thing I want to do?” All these thoughts happen within the first second of response time, by the way, because by the second second, I’d already come around. “Oh, right, I’m in this class to learn new things. Also, I’ve done this very same class before and I know why this is laid out the way it’s laid out.”

I noticed that groups of people experiencing the problems I identified at first were groups that I was a part of. I also discovered that the more I expanded into groups I wasn’t a part of, the more I found myself recalling past conversations that justified my assumptions that group X felt emotion Y. (In other words, I found myself trying not to guess, but still kind of guessing.) Finally, I noticed that there was a clear pattern to my solutions. This part made me feel like I was unconsciously working backwards, where I was starting with the solution and manufacturing a problem to fit. On a conscious level, however, I was definitely working in the proper sequential direction, which makes me think that sustainability leadership really is the solution to most (like, really MOST) of our (human) problems.

[Joe Spradley]

5 Problems / 5 Solutions

1. Lack of Community Engagement

Problem: Movement leaders experience frustration and disappointment when their organized events are not well attended.

Solution: Increase marketing efforts through social media, community group partnerships, and build incentives for others to bring their friends.

2. Low Enrollment for Movement

Problem: Movement leaders become disheartened and discouraged when the participants of their events do not become evangelized to continue or return.

Solution: Conduct surveys to understand potential participants’ needs and preferences. Create engaging and diverse programs that cater to different skill levels and interests. Utilize testimonials and success stories to showcase the benefits of sticking with it.

3. Frustration with Websites

Problem: Movement leaders feel frustrated and helpless in crafting their digital presence that reflects their real personality and mission.

Solution: Offer tutorials or support for website management. Provide a service that custom builds their site together.

4. Curating the Crowd

Problem: Dance event organizers are stressed out about curating the right crowd for their dance event.

Solution: Create themed events or exclusive membership options to cultivate a specific crowd. Implement feedback systems to understand the audience’s preferences and improve future events.

5. Limited Resources

Problem: Movement leaders and organizations feel restricted due to limited resources and funding.

Solution: Develop strategic fundraising campaigns and grant applications to secure necessary resources. Partner with engaged community crowdfunding and philanthropists to create sustainable funding sources and resource-sharing initiatives.

[Jim Jenkins]

5 problems, Jim Jenkins

General Field: Food security

Problem: People feel frustrated and somewhat helpless when it comes to growing some of their own food and making their property more climate resilient because they don’t have the information, experience, space or example right in front of them to copy from. They suffer from many myths that it consumes significant time that they don’t have, they don’t have enough space and it has to cost a lot of money.

Solution: Develop a demonstration urban food garden and climate resilient yard site on local community property with QRcode identification and explanations of plant species, growing techniques, climate benefit information and awareness events whereby people can take the information and apply some of the same practices and ideas on their own property with a greater change of success. Engage experts to contribute and focus on in person sessions to improve follow through. Engage with Chef’s to develop and demonstrate recipes with ingredients that people are not familiar with.

General Field: Positive sustainability leadership

Problem: Mental health clinicians are seeing a growing number of patients suffering from climate change anxiety—also referred to as eco-anxiety, eco-grief, or climate doom as a result of the size of the climate change problem heralded in the news and civilization’s growing experience with weather disasters. These reports and events need to be taken seriously but they become overwhelming for people such that they feel they have no control, develop a negative belief, give up hope and become paralyzed with inaction. If there is no hope, there is very little ‘trying’ to make change for the better. Society is still making many mistakes yet there is a lot of learning going on and promising examples of progress to balance the negativity..

Solution 1: Develop a podcast for audiences who haven’t been reached, to bring to light examples of the positive advances on climate change and environmental sustainability that have been made along with the work and messaging of inspiring, positive, mindset changing speakers and their examples of how to think differently, to the forefront for audiences who are not aware of their work nor know where to look for it. There are a number of public figures (Christiana Fugueres, Per Espen Stoknes, Joshua Spodek) who have developed approaches such as Positive Optimism, Changing Apocalypse Fatigue into Action and the Spodek method to draw from.

Solution 2: Develop my own brand as a speaker on applied sustainability and with an irrepressible optimistic mindset

General Field: Sustainability Leadership

Problem: Many managers in organizations still believe sustainability is something the sustainability department mostly does and they feel threatened in an already overworked role that they will have pick up a new field. One that takes more work, requires them to redesign products, change manufacturing processes which cost more money and still maintain company profitability. Companies are starting to back away from stated sustainability projects over concerns about the impact to profitability.

Solution: Develop an understanding of current sustainability ROI calculation (Specifically work with Stern Sustainability Business) and propagate this methodology across related sustainability projects proposed, expect to propose and am involved in.

General Field: Hard to grasp sustainability concepts

Problem: A certain majority of the population are searching out and willing to purchase products with green attributes that imply they are less impactful for the environment. It makes them feel good that they are doing their part. They purchase these products with certain green expectations, and some do have a benefit but many people feel cheated when they find out the products are no better or perhaps worse than advertised within the whole picture of their impact (green washing). Often the information provided is incomplete and can be hard to understand to make a quick decision on whether to buy a product or not. Some product manufacturers wilfully mislead the buyer or don’t know what they are doing, thinking a small improvement in one area is sufficient without considering the others

Solution: Using greenwashing and green products as one example of many complex sustainability topics, the solution is to create a series of ‘how to think about _______’ videos or short explanations in an appealing format that are simple, to the point, easy to understand. Have them vetted and post them publicly (You Tube, web site, …) to drive better decision making, influence behaviour change and awareness.

Reflection:
1. How hard to identify the problem? Took a while, many problems are inter-related and narrowing them to become workable is a challenge. I probably have more work to do in this regard once I take another look at them.
2. Was it easy or hard to see the problem from the perspective of the people they affect? I don’t think it was hard but there is probably lots of nuance I could learn more of in some future discussions
3. Did it get easier with practice? Didn’t get any easier, yet, but expect it will with more experience.
4. Do your problems and solutions have much chance to become projects? These problems are items I’ve been observing so I think they are real. Some of them are big and will need some narrowing to make workable.

[Jim Jenkins]

Reflection on RJ’s talk,

It was a powerful story and I took a number of transferrable learnings from it.
1. It illustrated the importance of the passion needed to work through the tough spots and the unexpected in a project.
2. What you think is the problem that needs to be solved may not be the problem that you can solve and still achieve a meaningful outcome.
2. The problem will likely evolve as you gather feedback. Be open to many iterations and adapting your mindset. That’s not a mistake, it’s practice. Each cycle is an opportunity to learn and improve the outcome.

[Eunnye]

Five Problems & Solutions

Problem 1
NYC Seniors who don’t live with close families and friends and have minor mobility issues don’t get a chance to go outside freely by themselves and feel isolated and lonely.

Solution
Create outdoor gentle stretching class
Find person to walk together, like dog walking person to the Central Park
Find a walking company in the neighbor who also needs walking partner
Find lunch/dinner gathering
Connect with dog & cat fostering
Create mindfulness group in person & online

Problem 2
Small business owners have high upkeep operation expenses.
Local popular juice bar owner who is a vegan, cat rescuer, and advocate cruelty-free, feels shame that his business creates too much disposable plastic waste and green food scraps go to waste every day. In addition, he feels stressed because garbage pick up service is also expensive.
Implement bring your cup program
Install recycling bin & description to promote reduce single usages and brand his juice bar
Find how to donate food scrap to be composted
Find out how commercial level of compost pick up can lower the operation cost

Problem 3
10 years old Jaden loves art & craft, especially landscape drawing, but he is attending the local summer camp where he gets only one hour a week art session. He is not satisfied and less motivated at the summer camp. Parents decided to enroll him from their convenient and realistic perspective (cost conscious, closer location) rather than focus on his learning curiosity.
Create own drawing schedule at home
Find someone who has experience in outdoor drawing to draw together
Change to Art Camp

Problem 4
I have been guiding SEL teen girls group for eight months, and noticed some of them showed obsessive watching in cosmetic makeup postings from social media and following peer pressure to do the same. They feel the urge to shop everything they see to copy. They are feeling restless, anxious, distracted and not satisfied with their natural look.

Redirect their interest to learn health and beauty & other activity
Learn about harmful chemicals used in cosmetic
Show good examples not to wear makeup at an early age
Teach them power of consumer & choice

Problem 5
Three teen girls from the SEL group rarely consume vegetables, and love eating processed food, high sugar & carb and meat. They feel mood swings, are cranky and have constipation. One is skinny and small, and two are overweight.

Teach them nutrition & benefits of eating plant based food
Show them how processed food is made & real food is made
Less eating out, learn how to cook at home
Exercise & sleep routine check up

Reflection on next day
Once I started to work on it, I was able to notice more problems in the area of living healthily, sustainably, happily and communally. I think problems related to how society is organized in a certain way. I look forward to seeking out advice on this exercise.

[Bonnie]

5 Problems and Solutions:

1. Problem: I often feel anxious while waiting for my appointment in the waiting room. This nervousness causes my blood pressure to spike, leading to an inaccurate reading when the nurse first measures it. As a result, they usually need to take my blood pressure again after the visit to get a more accurate measurement, which leads to rework and prolongs the appointment.
Solution: Creating a calming waiting room environment can significantly benefit patients as they prepare for their appointments. Providing soothing music, comfortable seating, and soft lighting can help alleviate anxiety and promote relaxation.
2. Problem:Individuals who cannot drive or lack access to reliable transportation often experience frustration and anxiety over their inability to attend medical appointments. This barrier can lead to delayed healthcare treatments, negatively impacting their overall health and well-being.
Solution: The healthcare systems partner with shuttle companies to arrange rides for patients.
3. Problem: People often get lost or feel confused when navigating their health insurance plans and coverage. As a result, they may not know what is covered, leading to unexpectedly large medical bills for treatments that are not included in their coverage.
Solution:Create a platform that explains health insurance terminology. Incorporate analysis tools to evaluate healthcare bills, the insurance-covered portion, and the patient’s responsibilities
4. Problem: People feel overwhelmed accessing their medical records, especially the medical records from different providers across various healthcare systems and networks. The information is often incomplete, and patients must navigate through multiple platforms to retrieve the data.
Solution: Enable different healthcare system platforms to exchange and integrate data accurately and securely between providers and patients
5. Problem: After receiving care, patients often feel uncertain about their next steps. They may not know where to turn get support and guidance they need to improve their health, leaving them feeling anxious about their recovery journey
Solution: Educate patients with healthcare resources, including preventative care and nurseline. Ask patient care team to follow up and check on the patients after discharge or their appointments

Reflection:

Everyone needs healthcare, and there are numerous problems within the healthcare system. Therefore, it was relatively easy to list the problems experienced by most people. However, it was challenging to prioritize and select which problems to include in my list, given that I could only choose five.

My goal is to improve and transform the healthcare system to make it more efficient and patient-friendly. I also had difficulty outlining the problems I wanted to share. Initially, I considered listing one primary problem and then subdividing it into five smaller ones. For example, lack of transportation to access care could be the primary problem, with subcategories including elderly individuals who lack transportation, people without a driver’s license, and those with mobility issues, among others. Later, I decided to select five distinct problems and explore which ones are more feasible for implementing solutions.

Recognizing the problems from the perspective of those they affect was relatively easy for me, as I have experienced these challenges firsthand. This personal experience allows me to empathize deeply with others facing similar issues and to understand the downstream impacts these problems can have.

The process of identifying problems becomes easier with practice, especially after numerous observations and experiences. However, finding solutions can be more challenging, depending on the complexity of the problems and the level of expertise required.

I believe some of the problems and solutions I outlined could become viable projects due to the high demand for improving healthcare access, particularly in terms of reaching doctor appointments and enhancing the overall patient experience. Even if these ideas do not become viable projects, taking small steps to make improvements is still valuable, as everyone can benefit from such changes.

[Hayden Kessinger]

Love it, Bonnie! Looking forward to talking with you about the problem/solution you choose to focus on when you’re ready!

[Author]

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