Across the Future of Procedural Care Leadership Retreat, one question kept surfacing: How can healthcare teams turn what they learn into better everyday practice?

Sessions on operating room efficiency, video review, quality improvement, and team preparation pointed to a common answer. Better visibility can help teams see where they have opportunities to improve. Lasting progress depends on how they interpret that information, involve the people doing the work, and follow through.

Here are six themes that emerged from the conversations.

1. Objective data gives teams a place to start

Teams often have a sense that something is getting in the way of care. Objective data can help them understand what is happening and where to focus.

At Ohio State, discussion of OR code response described how video review helped validate concerns about crowding and unclear role assignments. Those observations helped inform simulation and more clearly defined responsibilities during a response. At Stanford, a study of post-procedure debriefing examined which parts of the process teams completed and how completion related to observed teamwork.

These examples show how data can make a broad concern more specific—and give teams something concrete to investigate. The first step is to define the question: What do we need to understand, and what decision could that information support?

2. Trust makes review useful

Collecting information does not automatically create learning. People need to feel able to speak honestly about what they see.

Stanford’s Multidisciplinary Quality Rounds bring different roles together to review de-identified clips. The format starts with what went well, then gives staff a chance to identify opportunities for improvement. Ohio State’s trauma video review program also emphasized a deliberate process for building trust, selecting cases, and involving a multidisciplinary committee.

The intent matters. When review focuses on learning and improving processes, teams can discuss difficult moments without reducing the conversation to individual blame. That requires clear expectations, thoughtful facilitation, and visible follow-through.

3. Preparation and reflection in tandem are essential to improving processes

Preparation is more than having a plan. It means anticipating what may happen, aligning the people and resources needed, and adapting as conditions change.

In his workshop, Dr. Andrew Petrosoniak asked attendees to think through how initiatives might fail before launching them. A premortem exercise surfaced practical risks such as limited staff time, competing priorities, and a mismatch between a program and the needs of the people expected to use it.

Reflection completes the cycle. Debriefing helps teams make sense of experience and carry lessons forward. As Dr. Petrosoniak put it, “Reflective process is absolutely key, whether we are getting better at a sport or improving operations at a hospital.”

Together, preparation and reflection help teams learn before, during, and after change.

4. Better decisions need multiple perspectives

A schedule or metric rarely tells the whole story. Decisions depend on the context around it—and the people who understand that context.

In the “Make Your Case” workshop, participants reviewed the same operating room schedule but considered different constraints: equipment availability, surgeon schedules, patient readiness, staffing, and the possibility of add-on cases. Different assumptions led to different recommendations.

The exercise underscored the value of bringing operational and clinical perspectives into the same discussion. Data can help teams understand what may be possible; the people involved can assess what is workable.

5. Improvement must fit the work and last beyond launch

A change is more likely to take hold when it fits into the way people work and when staff can see their input leading somewhere.

The Room State preview illustrated how different roles need information suited to their responsibilities, from pre-op readiness to turnover demands. In quality improvement, speakers emphasized being present where care happens, listening to staff, and returning to check whether changes are working.

That ongoing attention matters. Teams need clear ownership, a way to measure progress, and regular opportunities to adjust. Otherwise, even a promising initiative can lose momentum when competing demands arise.

6. Efficiency, safety, and staff experience are connected

The retreat’s discussions of scheduling, code response, and team communication showed that operational and quality goals often meet in the same workflows.

Clear roles can help a team respond more coherently. Better coordination can reduce avoidable delays. Reviewing how work unfolds can reveal where processes create friction for both patients and staff.

The opportunity is to look at these outcomes together. Improving a workflow can support safer care while also making the work more manageable for the people delivering it.

Carry the learning forward

Across the sessions, the message was consistent: visibility creates an opportunity, but people and processes turn that opportunity into improvement.

For perioperative and hospital leaders bringing these conversations back to their organizations, a practical next step is to choose one workflow to examine, involve the people who know it best, and agree on how the team will learn from the change. Then make time to revisit what happened and decide what to do next.