Jesse Eastes

Season’s greetings,

December is especially blessed this year as on Sunday the 25th we get to experience Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah on the same day. There are five weekends and every holiday falls on one. So unusual has our year been that the Cubs won the world series, England had Brexit, and the United States has changed forever.

This is a great time to spend with family, reflect on the past, and contemplate the future. I congratulate all of you for this past year’s achievements and progress. I look forward to the new year in which I believe great strides will be made towards resolving health care technological and policy issues around the world, it is my fervent hope that patients are empowered to lead the charge.

For this newsletter I chose to focus on the subject of moral injury in health care. Our submitting authors have done a wonderful job and I thank them from the depths of my heart. Heather Hanson, renown attorney, addresses the trauma of litigation on the health care provider and opens our eyes to the ghosts of health care past with Saving our doctors and ourselves. Dr. Charlotte Sweeney offers a glimpse at the patient centered present through the work of family advisory boards with her article Renaissance in health care. Dr. Amith takes us to the participatory tomorrow with the spirit of a futurist in Patient, doctor, and the data: emergence of the third player. I will wrap up our Dickensian narrative with Healing moral injury in health care. Over all I hope we painted a picture of serious problems, and offered hopeful, positive solutions in the spirit of the season.

I ask you to remember our service members (from all nations) deployed around the world during the holidays, those who will never come home, our veterans, and the constant struggles they face. Keep in your thoughts and prayers health care staff, fire, and police working these holidays, and doing shift work away from their families. Last but not least those hospitalized at this time. Many blessings to you. Yasher Koach! May you be strong.

Jesse Eastes