Here are some lovely parts of various purpose, principles, value, vision, and mission statements from several large healthcare organizations:
- Improving customers’ lives by making healthcare work better.
- Our customers are at the center of all we do.
- Act with Urgency.
- Be Excellent.
- Challenge Convention.
- Do the Right Thing.
- Work Together.
- Integrity: Honor commitments. Never compromise ethics.
- Compassion: Walk in the shoes of people we serve and those with whom we work.
- Relationships: Build trust through collaboration.
Innovation: Invent the future and learn from the past. - Performance: Demonstrate excellence in everything.
- Inspiring hope and promoting health through integrated clinical practice, education and research.
- Transforming medicine to connect and cure as the global authority in the care of serious or complex disease.
- The needs of the patient come first.
- Treat everyone in our diverse community, including patients, their families and colleagues, with dignity.
- Adhere to the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and personal responsibility, worthy of the trust our patients place in us.
- Provide the best care, treating patients and family members with sensitivity and empathy.
- Inspire hope and nurture the well-being of the whole person, respecting physical, emotional and spiritual needs.
- Value the contributions of all, blending the skills of individual staff members in unsurpassed collaboration.
- Infuse and energize the organization, enhancing the lives of those we serve, through the creative ideas and unique talents of each employee.
- Deliver the best outcomes and highest quality service through the dedicated effort of every team member.
- Sustain and reinvest in our mission and extended communities by wisely managing our human, natural and material resources.
It’s hard to disagree with any of these as something an organization or a person should strive for. Who doesn’t want to be excellent, or challenge convention, or do the right thing?
However—and here’s the key point: These are not human statements—these are corporate statements, corporations with their own corporate aspirations.
And that’s why, if you are a physician, you should carefully write out your own personal and professional mission statements, and then line them up with your employers and see to what extent they align.
Why?
Because the degree to which you and your employer’s mission statements overlap will determine the extent to which you find joy in your career.
(Whether mission statements are effective or not is a different question. The research is limited, but the answer is “maybe.” Here’s a good reference to start with: Effectiveness of Mission Statements in Organizations – A Review).