Recently, Pavi and Andrew hosted a beautiful Awakin Call with Don Berwick.

For the past 30 years, Donald Berwick has been a leader and innovator in quality improvement in the healthcare system in the United States. A pediatrician by training, a professor at both Harvard Medical School and the School of Public Health, and a leading health care official during the Obama Administration, Berwick challenges administrators, policy makers, and doctors to go beyond the standard discussion of systems, strategies, and statistics to something more essential, more human—something he considers moral. The secret to improving quality in medical care, he argues, is love. “Healthcare is more about love than about most other things,” Berwick says. “It’s not just the quality of mercy, it’s the mercy of quality.” He believes no one should be left behind. Among his numerous awards and honors, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005, in recognition of his work with the British National Health Service.

Though a few excerpts cannot capture or replace the beauty of Dr. Berwick's or our hosts' deep presence, which may be more apparent in part from the full recording or transcript that I hope you will check out, below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out:

• "Sometimes when I fly over the United States and look down at towns and cities, I have this weird feeling that I know everybody. I know I don't, but there's a sense of community that I think is embedded."
• "Creative acts happen at intersections. Interdependencies and respect across boundaries develop and then new possibilities develop."
• "When young people ask me what advice I have, I don't have a lot of advice, but one is find a mentor. There's nothing like somebody who thinks, for whatever reasons, that they've got the opportunity to take care of you, to love you, to help you with tough choices."
• "We live in a complex system, a complex world, and we don't really get a lot done separately. It’s together that things that matter happen."
• "If we want to make a hospital a safer place to have surgery or a country a better place to grow up as a child, it only can be done together."
• "You have to ask not just what you do, but what you're part of, and that opens all sorts of possibilities."
• "Healthcare doesn't make us healthy. It doesn't protect our health. It's a repair shop. It's a place we go when things got broken."
• "Let's do the right thing when someone has a heart attack or needs an organ transplant or is depressed. But why do they get a heart attack? Why did the organ fail? What makes them depressed?"
• "Take criminal justice. It's a travesty in this country. We incarcerate people at a rate much higher than any other country. We do not have a justice system or a compassion system in criminal justice."
• "The reason we don't have better schools, better housing, better food security, better prisons is in some important way the fact that healthcare is taking the resources. I know that's edgy, but I believe that to be the case."
• "We are having a lot of trouble as a planet committing to some basic level of equity that allows everyone to live a good life. It's totally mathematically achievable. There's nothing in our way, nothing technical, nothing. It's just the will."
• "Taking care of yourself is not actually a selfish act at all, as any parent knows. I think it's important. I think we're not doing very well at it. From what I can see, the fatigue levels and the erosion of energy is really quite large, so we need to find ways to sustain ourselves."
• "We need healthcare needs to be a human right in America; we need to fix criminal justice, fix climate change and hunger and homelessness. We need to stop assault on helpless people at our southern border, would-be immigrants. We need to have compassionate immigration policy. We need to restore dignity and science to our democratic institutions."
• "I think changing your mind is key. And I think that the world is constantly changing, so if you're going to get fixed in what you already knew, you're just not gonna be fit for use. It's not going to work."
• "Stay open. The next person you meet is going to know something you don't know, and if you find it out, you're both richer."
• "We have spiritual aspects that have to be respected in order for healing to occur."
• "If you find yourself fighting all the time with people who disagree with you, or who are angry at you and see it a different way, run! Go where your friends are, and then that will build, that's how the world changes."

Lots of gratitude to all the behind-the-scenes volunteers that made this call happen!