Episode 111: Measuring What Matters: Designing Patient Transformation

What does “success” look like and who gets to decide? In this episode, Dr. Lara Salyer explores how customized success metrics can revolutionize the patient and physician’s work together.

Dr. Salyer recounts a mentoring session with a healthcare practitioner who is developing a program for patient education but feels it may not be comprehensive enough. This story highlights the practitioner’s hesitation, rooted in a fear of success and the responsibilities and criticisms that come with it. Dr. Salyer reintroduces the “WARM” method—Who, Aim low, Reason, and Messy—as a tool to combat self-sabotage and encourage taking action, even if it’s not perfect.

This episode also addresses the challenge of measuring transformation in functional medicine, where data is not always the best indicator of success. Dr. Salyer advocates for self-measured metrics that capture the patient’s emotional and holistic health changes. She outlines steps to create these metrics, including formulating questions, establishing a scoring system, and streamlining the process, recommending the use of a simple Google document to keep things straightforward and efficient.

Highlighting her CME course that adopts a similar approach to foster creativity and prevent burnout among healthcare professionals, Dr. Salyer encourages listeners to create their own metrics and to revise them as needed, based on patient feedback and changes in practice focus.

About The Catalyst Host, Dr. Lara Salyer:

I worked as a family physician for 15 years until burnout changed the trajectory of my career. I realized I wanted to start a holistic functional medicine practice in my rural hometown and made it happen. In addition to practicing functional medicine, I now mentor practitioners who are looking to change their paths in healthcare by using what I refer to as the “Catalyst Roadmap”. I share each step of this framework with listeners so that they may apply it to their careers, relationships, personal goals, and projects.

In This Episode I'm Talking About:

How the closer we get to success we self-sabotage and a tool to combat this
The challenge of measuring transformation in functional medicine, where data is not always the best indicator of success
Self-measured metrics that capture the patient’s emotional and holistic health changes

Quotes:

“The closer we get to success, we self-sabotage. It happens all the time. It still happens to me. Everybody does this. Success brings upon new responsibilities and almost a fear that we become aware of as we get closer to completing something. Once we check that box that it’s completed, now we’ve left ourselves out in the open for criticism. And I think that really sits very difficult with a lot of us.” (03:32 | Dr. Lara Salyer)
“We can measure all sorts of data in your body, but in my opinion, that is not a true measure of transformation. What I’m looking for is body transformation—emotional, mind and soul transformation. And we cannot know how a patient feels. Only a patient knows this. So these self-measured metrics are my favorite to use.” (09:00 | Dr. Lara Salyer)
“Make sure as you’re designing your metric that you include questions that you will usually strategically teach on.” (16:22 | Dr. Lara Salyer)
“When you start sensing that you’re getting closer to success and you need just a few more things, ask yourself, ‘Do I really?’ ‘Who’s talking to me?’ ‘Who am I comparing myself to?’ ‘Do I have enough here to get going?’ You probably do. And this is your pep talk to get going. Put it out there. The only way you can adjust is by putting it out there, even if it’s imperfect. And then reiterating on that. That is the key. And then secondly, remember, use metrics. Create your own. And that can measure your own transformation in patients. Have fun with it.” (17:21 | Dr. Lara Salyer)