#OHSUFroyoReport
Author: Avital O’Glasser, MD
Keywords: community, trust, connection, camaraderie
Last May, the editorial board at the Journal of Hospital Medicine issued a call for articles for a special theme issue on trust, especially trust in times of uncertainty. In their call for articles, the editorial leadership team posited: “A functioning healthcare system requires trust on many levels”. JHM editor Dr. Samir Shah has also said that “trust serves as the basis for many transactional and non-transactional relationships” in medicine.
Both before and certainly during the COVID-19 pandemic, a quirky twitter-based initiative amongst members of the Oregon Health & Science University community became an unlikely but effective tool to build multidisciplinary relationships and trust across silos. I’ve been meaning to find a way to share this with the medical community for a while, and this first WIM blog post of June felt like the perfect opportunity to warm your hearts…with something cold: #OHSUFroyoReport.
#OHSUFroyoReport was initiated on twitter by members of the OHSU general surgery residency program on the trauma rotation in summer 2019 as a lighthearted means to communicate the current flavors at the self-serve froyo machines in the main hospital cafeteria—and additionally share accoutrement combinations from the toppings buffet bar. With cafeteria-related safety changes early in the pandemic, froyo fans began sharing creative topping combinations created from candy bars and other single-serve items from the cafeteria (including Whoppers, Twix, MilkyWays, fresh bananas, and cheesecake) or ward nutrition rooms (peanut butter & graham crackers).
This social media-based communication between members of the surgical teams then began to spread to multiple departments—internal medicine, anesthesiology, radiology, and more. It also welcomed participants of different training levels (students, residents, and faculty), degrees (physicians, APPs), and practice location (inpatient and outpatient). The hashtag was quickly recognized as a means to stay connected during the geographic separation and loneliness of the pandemic—and as a means to cultivate trust between individuals who may have only worked together in passing or never at all. Running tropes emerged, especially a near-universal aversion to the peach flavor. The ante was sometimes upped, like the ice cream float iteration. It is also used to highlight institutional culture during virtual residency recruitment season and to virtually welcome new residency/fellowship matches and faculty, who identified themselves on twitter, to the OHSU community–as well as physically welcome them once on campus. And yes, Dr. Tarin Worrest, THE originator of #OHSUFroyoReport, even has an instructional tweetorial about it.
Those who participate in #OHSUFroyoReport credit it with doing more to build interdisciplinary relationships via social media than anything else at OHSU, but these claims are more than just jest. The hashtag cultivated trust in and connection with our own colleagues and trainees, especially when we couldn’t see each other face to face as often as we were accustomed to—and developed collegial working relationships (grounded in levity and brain food) with colleagues we had never met in person. It epitomized the power of #medtwitter to foster communication and team building synchronously and asynchronously. It augmented humor and psychological safety in the hospital learning environment. It helped break down silos between departments, especially departments often stereotyped to be at least ambivalent and at worst antagonistic towards each other. Especially from my role in preop clinic, it helped me build trust and interdisciplinary relationships in this high-stakes arena of medicine. And, #OHSUFroyoReport engendered trust that you would be alerted when the peach flavor had finally been rotated off the froyo machine.
I have seen other institution-treats earn their own hashtags, and I think something like #OHSUFroyoReport can easily be exported widely. So whatever your warm weather or traditional hospital treat is–share it, tweet it, spread the fun and joy, and build trust and relationships along the way.
About the author: Avital O’Glasser, MD, is a hospitalist at Oregon Health & Science University and the editor of the WIMS blog (Twitter: @aoglasser).
