SONSIEL_Peter Preziosi: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
OR SONSIEL Intro:
Welcome to the SONSIEL podcast, where we host interviews with the most transformational nurse scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders. Through sharing their personal journeys, we create inspiration, provide guidance, and give you actionable ideas you can use to be a catalyst for change.
Hiyam Nadel:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the SONSIEL Podcast, and wait till you hear who I have today. Dr. Peter Preziosi of the World Health Organization. Welcome, Peter. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners?
Peter Preziosi:
Hi Hiyam, and thank you very much for inviting me to the podcast today. My name is Peter Preziosi, and I am at the World Health Organization leading a team of quality standards credentialing and assessment experts for a global lifelong learning academy that we’ve begun to build. And it started back in 2019, and I’ve been there since its inception.
Hiyam Nadel:
Wow!
Peter Preziosi:
And also, a member of the board of directors of SONSIEL.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s fantastic, and before, I want to hear so much more about the World Health Organization and what you’re doing, but just to back up a little bit, I always like to ask this question, which is what inspired you to go into healthcare?
Peter Preziosi:
Interesting. When I was a kid, my dad was a laborer. My parents only went to the eighth grade, I’m from a big Italian-American Catholic family. Born in New York, on Long Island, and I saw how hard my father worked and how difficult it was to be a laborer, and I didn’t want that for my career. And my parents certainly encouraged me to go to college, but I had to put myself through. So when it came time to select a career, I thought. What kind of a career should I select? And I was really interested in helping people and I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be great to go into healthcare? So I started to go into pre-med because at the time that I went to school, men were physicians and women predominantly were nurses. So as I wanted to, as I was checking out the healthcare field, I decided, well, let me see if I can stand the sight of blood. I got a job as a nursing assistant when, at Tampa General Hospital, we had moved from New York to Florida because my father could sandblast ships year-round in that weather, in that climate, and I was, became a nursing assistant at Tampa General Hospital, and I was working in the burn unit, and that was where I was inspired by nurses. And I also had a role model that was a man in nursing, and I was like, wow, I guess men can be nurses, I had no idea. So I was, I saw the role that nurses played in healthcare, that we were there to address the patients, not only their physiological needs, biological needs, but their response to illness, emotionally, psychosocially, and we were there, we were the glue 24/7 that really helped patients heal and optimize their well-being. And that was what really inspired me to then become a nurse. And secondly, I had to put myself through college, and I was able to earn, as I continued my education, I got my bachelor’s degree at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and was able to be gainfully employed as I continued on to get my graduate education and ultimately my Ph.D.
Hiyam Nadel:
Wow, that’s amazing, that’s amazing. Do you feel, first of all, I’m sure your parents are very proud of you, you have to tell me that.
Peter Preziosi:
Well, it was interesting. I think that my parents wanted me to be a physician.
Hiyam Nadel:
Right.
Peter Preziosi:
I think that that’s where, you know, and it’s certainly evolving, and I think that the reputation of nurses has certainly changed, even post-pandemic, you know, we look at nurses and physicians and other types of clinicians, pharmacists, social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists that are really caring, doing direct care as heroes now in a post-pandemic and in a pandemic environment. And also, there have been nurse leaders that have done some amazing things in their careers through our history that I think that have gotten recognition over time.
Hiyam Nadel:
Right.
Peter Preziosi:
So I do think that the perception of nursing has evolved since when I started out as a nurse in the eighties.
Hiyam Nadel:
And the job has evolved as well, as medical care becomes more complex, right? The nurse has to have much more education and training, etc. So I think, you know, part of that evolvement was around the complexity of patients that we care for.
Peter Preziosi:
Absolutely, Hiyam, and I think it also has to do with the fact that populations around the world are, people are living longer and they’re living longer with chronic disease.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s right.
Peter Preziosi:
And there aren’t cures necessarily for some of these chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiac disease. It’s lifestyle and that’s the role that nursing plays as they look at the psychosocial, physiological, family contextual environment that an individual lives within and addresses those challenges, and particularly as you take a look at what’s happening around the world with mental health. One of the learning programs that we are developing at the World Health Organization is around mental health and the recognition and the identification of signs and symptoms of mental health so that individuals that are coming into health systems can be identified when they’re coming into public health in village clinics, and to be identified that they are at risk of mental health and then get them proper attention and proper care because we have to realize that mental health also impacts physical well-being. They go hand in hand.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s right. That’s right, and I think we’re learning that more and more so now. So since you’re talking about, I can’t wait, I have another question, but I’ll come back to that, but I so want to hear what you’re doing in the World Health Organization. Could you give us a little, expand on the work you’re doing? And it sounds like this is a sort of a new program.
Peter Preziosi:
Yes, it’s relatively new. It was conceptualized by the Director General Dr. Tedros, when he came in as the Director General of the World Health Organization, and in having conversations with heads of state around the world, recognizing that he had to begin to modernize the World Health Organization infrastructure and digitize our offerings, he found out that there was a real skills gap with health workers and the ability to accelerate the adoption of World Health Organization guidance into practice. So the thought was, Let’s develop a learning academy that will develop continuing professional development and lifelong learning for all types of individuals involved in healthcare, health, regulated health professionals, unregulated health workers, policymakers, patients, family members, and create a global academy. Part of the opportunity of, for our learning academy, is to distribute digital credentials upon successful completion of our courses and learning programs. And these digital credentials will have metadata that’s machine readable that can be used by regulators, by credentialing bodies, by employers that want to obtain specific types of skills, now, within their organizations or, for instance, say that you are a humanitarian relief agency, and you want to go to an outbreak of Ebola or monkeypox, and you want to have skilled health workers that are knowledgeable in those areas. So we could provide a credential for skills related to caring for people that have Ebola or monkeypox, and then the individuals can be deployed.
Hiyam Nadel:
But then a hospital like mine could also take that skill set, right, or take that credential.
Peter Preziosi:
Absolutely, employers around the world, because of the fast pace, and you talked a little bit about this earlier, the fast pace of change in healthcare, there are new skills that are emerging, and how do you capture those skills in a way that a traditional university setting cannot necessarily develop in a rapid way?
Hiyam Nadel:
Right.
Peter Preziosi:
And to be able to deploy that and that’s you know, employers are looking for these kinds of skills right now that are very specific. Think about, Hiyam, when the US healthcare system was preparing to adopt electronic health record systems.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes.
Peter Preziosi:
And the new skills that were required of clinicians and individuals in health information management, they needed to have specific skill sets that would assist in helping to implement these electronic health record systems within their health systems. And think about if we had a learning academy that could provide specific credentials to be able to offer to health workers for those specific types of systems.
Hiyam Nadel:
Wow, the standards, I keep thinking standardization, standardization.
Peter Preziosi:
Absolutely.
Hiyam Nadel:
The teaching, I mean, it’s amazing, and on a global impact, wow. So it sounds like you’re, actually, sort of starting up your own, like a new business within a big organization, so what we refer to as intrapreneurship. So do I have that correct?
Peter Preziosi:
Absolutely, it’s a new way of doing business within the World Health Organization, and that’s what makes this so exciting and what’s really great about working at the World Health Organization is the level of commitment and passion of W.H.O. staff and all the people that are involved with the World Health Organization, because we’re really doing great things around the world.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes, that’s amazing. But I’m sure like any new business entity, even within a large organization, has its own unique challenges. Can you speak to those?
Peter Preziosi:
Yeah, it’s, you know, you have to, when you’re doing something new and different and deploying, and for us, we’re packaging and deploying information in different ways than a traditional guidance and a policy. We are putting policy into action and teaching it. What we ultimately want to accomplish is we want learners that are coming into the W.H.O. academy to be able to demonstrate competence, their skills in practice, and then we can, and that’s what we want to be able to showcase. So it’s a very different type of way of doing business within the World Health Organization. And let me be clear, this type of way of looking at learning and continuing professional development, it’s been experimented with and tried around the world, but everybody’s having challenges with building out competency-based learning programs. It’s difficult to focus on learning outcomes and to be able to assess learners on what outcomes are expected of them out in the field. So it’s going to take us some time, and it’s going to take a commitment because it’s something that’s being done very differently. So you have to rethink how an organization has been structured, you have to think about corporate culture, and you have to think about breaking through some of the traditional bureaucracies that exist to try something new and different.
Hiyam Nadel:
Right.
Peter Preziosi:
So I think those are the things that are challenging and, you know, being able to look at what needs to be accomplished. I mean, we’re literally creating something almost from scratch. Now, there have been things, there have been learning initiatives throughout the World Health Organization, and we’ve gotten great learnings that have been deployed around the world in different countries very successfully, but not quite the way we’re trying to do it, where we are looking at applying outcomes into practice.
Hiyam Nadel:
Right, interesting. What do you feel? I mean, so within the organization, do you feel that you have a lot more pressure to sort of build your credibility and then, of course, getting the credibility outside of the organization? Do you think it poses different challenges?
Peter Preziosi:
Yeah, well, first off, I don’t think that most people when they hear World Health Organization, they don’t initially think it’s a learning institution. They don’t look at the W.H.O. that way. They may look to the W.H.O. for guidance, they may look to the W.H.O. as the standard bearer or a standard setter, but they don’t necessarily think about how to take standards and make them come in, apply those standards into practice through a learning context, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And that’s, me, and having to do that, you have to look at the skill set of the people that are actually employed at W.H.O, and do you have the right skill mix of individuals that can deliver on that? Now, I was brought in from outside the World Health Organization because of my background in credentialing and technology. I came from a global credentialing organization, I also was in a global customer experience organization, and I was in a telephone company, Verizon, in their innovation incubator for health. So when they saw that skill mix that I had, plus I’m a registered nurse, they said, oh, these are some of the skills that we’ll need to be able to build a digital credentialing system. These are some of the skills that we’ll need in developing a quality system so that as we build and design learning programs, that we build and design these learning programs in a consistent, standardized way that can be repeatable, measurable, and predictable.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s right.
Peter Preziosi:
So, and the team that I have are experts in learning science, learning technology, and innovation, assessment, and credentialing. And so what we have to do to be successful is to be able to partner and align the work that we’re doing in the Academy to other divisions and departments of the World Health Organization, in order for us to run efficiently, and in order for us to integrate and mainstream our efforts with other departments and divisions of W.H.O. That takes a real skill, I think.
Hiyam Nadel:
It really does.
Peter Preziosi:
There are several teams within the academy, and that we all work together. There’s a technology team, there’s a learning design team, there’s a multilingual and cultural team, there is a partnership team, and we all work together to build this academy and then to integrate with the quality, norms, and standards division, other governance bodies, other departments. We were incubated, the W.H.O Academy was incubated out of the W.H.O. Health Workforce Department, that is developing standards of education for health workers. They look at the mobility and migration of health workers around the world, and they provide solutions to support health workers worldwide.
Hiyam Nadel:
Wow, yeah. So, you know, a couple of characteristics that you mentioned for any innovator to know is all idea, you can have a gazillion great ideas. But number one, if you don’t identify your stakeholders and bring them along or bring them with you, it can fail. It could also fail at the implementation phase. So again, regardless of how great your idea is, if you don’t do it carefully and seeing things from the other perspectives, it will fail. And then the third thing I heard you say is all the people you brought together to work together, the different perspectives, again, as an innovator, it’s critical.
Peter Preziosi:
Yeah, you know, I think part of the challenge we have sometimes is that other departments and divisions may fear that we could cannibalize them or make their work obsolete. So you have to bring them along and you have to explain the, and be able to clearly communicate the purpose and goals of what it is that you’re trying to do and to bring people along as partners. So that’s, I do believe that that’s a big failure of risk, if you will, of why sometimes some of these initiatives do not succeed within a large infrastructure.
Hiyam Nadel:
So true. So true. You know, I do want to go back and ask you a question, something that you said in the very beginning when you were going, thinking about your career, which is, because you are a male and nursing was mostly female, do you feel that has changed? And if so, do you feel like, you know, has it changed significantly that there are more males that enter the nursing field?
Peter Preziosi:
I think, again, it depends on what part of the world you’re talking about. There are certain countries, for instance, in Africa, where there are a much larger proportion of men in nursing than there are women, and it has to do with cultural issues. In the United States, it has to do with economic issues. As nurses become more financially remunerated for their services, you start to see men move into the field. As you see the profession as a sound profession that has great opportunity for job enhancement and growth, you’ll see more men come into, here in the United States. But like I say, it is variable around the world.
Hiyam Nadel:
It is interesting. I love that global perspective that you have. And by the way, I just want to make a comment. Even though you grew up in Tampa or Florida, you still have that beautiful Long Island, New York accent, which I love.
Peter Preziosi:
No, I moved down there when I was in junior high school. So the other thing that I was going to just say that makes it challenging too, you know, innovation problem projects are riskier than non-innovation projects. This is, this project that we’re working on this, developing this new department within the World Health Organization, it’s an innovation project and there are technical and challenges that we’re dealing with as we’re building a learning experience platform, and we want to develop digitized online learning and distribute that around the globe with digital credentials. That’s risky, and it can pose more challenge then, and there could be delays and cost overruns and different types of levels of stress and frustration. And that, what happens is that if you don’t have executive leadership supporting you through those tough times, it’s hard to get over those humps.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes. So, you know, I think that’s really a critical point. I know I have that here, which makes my work and my life much easier. But you personally, what challenge did you really need to overcome with you, with what you’re working with at the World Health Organization? Now, you obviously had executive leadership because this is what they wanted to do.
Peter Preziosi:
Correct. Yeah, I think finding the right mix of individuals. We bring in people from around the world. One of the challenges is just to be able to set meetings up, where you, people in different time zones working and having to also just the, you know, some of the administrative and technical requirements of onboarding contractors, vendors, consultants, all of those types of challenges are very real challenges. And they impact your ability to stay on the product development roadmap if you can’t seamlessly hire and onboard and get people up to speed within the World Health Organization, that can be a real challenge. I think that that’s been one that may be a little bit more challenging in an international, highly complex environment. So that I think is one issue. And I think that working in an international organization, terminology means something different in different parts of the world, and I’ll give an example from a nursing perspective. In the United States, nurses are licensed. We’re required to sit for a licensure examination.
Hiyam Nadel:
Right.
Peter Preziosi:
In some Commonwealth countries, we are, nurses are registered like in Australia. They go to an accredited recognized university, and if they are successful in completing their course of study, they become registered within the country. It’s a very different way of looking at, so when I say I’m a licensed practitioner, it means something, again, licensure is different, it means registration in another country. That’s just a tiny example, but when we’re talking about terminology, that’s relatively nascent in certain countries, countries that don’t have continuing professional development or lifelong learning infrastructure in place. Credentialing, even the terminology around credentialing and, or badging, certificates, certification, it all means something different. So when you select terminology, you have to be careful because it has different meanings in different parts of the world.
Hiyam Nadel:
Wow, so interesting. It really is, and of course, it makes sense, but we don’t think about it that way, right, because we’re just within our own little world here and you don’t see it that way. It’s just fascinating, really fascinating. Peter, I’d like to switch it up a little bit because I’m really excited to hear, how did you find SONSIEL? How did you hear about us? How did you, why did you join? I really would love to hear that story.
Peter Preziosi:
So I had the opportunity to meet up with a SONSIEL member who’s very active in the United Nations. Her name is Holly Shaw, and she’s a nurse. And when I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Holly Shaw, she told me, Peter, you must meet this group of nurse innovators and entrepreneurs, they’re really unique. They have such a great passion for wanting to transform healthcare, and they, when they set their minds to doing something, they make it happen, you have to meet them. And I was then introduced to the president of SONSIEL, and one of the founders of SONSIEL, Rebecca Love.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes.
Peter Preziosi:
And I was very inspired and I said, wow, I really want to get involved. So I got involved in SONSIEL and then was asked if I’d be interested in considering being part of the board of directors. And I am a certified association executive through the American Society of Association Executives. So I grew up in executive leadership, in associations. The very first one that I was employed by was the National League for Nursing accrediting body for Nursing Education in the United States. So I learned at a very young age how to become, how to be an association executive, and ultimately I became certified and held very different jobs, and I was also the Chief Executive Officer for Clinical Documentation Medical Transcription Association for the United States. And I was very interested in coming into SONSIEL and really helping to scale up and grow the organization because of the important work that it’s doing, the important work that we all in SONSIEL are doing to really want to transform healthcare through nursing innovative solutions. Because of the way healthcare is changing so dramatically and drastically, really needing to have all kinds of solutions, but in particular, solutions that are unique to the way nurses view patient care delivery.
Hiyam Nadel:
Right, right. I think it’s a very unique, unique perspective. Not the only perspective, but very unique.
Peter Preziosi:
Absolutely. Absolutely, we need all, we need all voices.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes.
Peter Preziosi:
And one of the great things that I find about SONSIEL is that we have members that are not just nurses. I mean, there are all kinds of people involved in SONSIEL, which makes it a stronger organization. So we have different types of thinking that all come into SONSIEL, which I think is really important, and we also really embrace the nursing student. So you have, you get to work side by side with individuals that are, are just coming into the field, which is really exciting too.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s right. They’re our future, aren’t they?
Peter Preziosi:
Absolutely.
Hiyam Nadel:
So having said all that, and SONSIEL makes me smile as well because I do think we really are actively and intentionally bringing different perspectives. But because of that, what are you most excited about? In innovation, nursing, nursing science, etc.?
Peter Preziosi:
Well, if you think about the global economy becoming more competitive, organizations have to be able to commercialize innovation more quickly and more successfully in order to succeed. And I think by fostering and supporting innovation, whether it’s intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship within an organization, even outside of an organization, will really help to fortify the healthcare system. So that’s what I’m really excited about. I’m really excited about the way SONSIEL looks at innovation and the framework and approach that SONSIEL takes to innovation. And I know that there are some pretty interesting things that we’re building within SONSIEL to really help to leverage our innovation platform and push that out around the globe. What I really want to do is I really want to help countries around the world embrace innovation, and particularly with ideas coming from nurses, because I do think that nurses that are caring directly for patients and their families have great ideas. And I’d love to be able to be part of helping them to get those ideas to fruition and out in practice to be able to transform healthcare here in the United States and around the world.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes, it makes me so excited. And for me, the most excitement is how we will impact our patients and their families that we dearly love and the reason we came into this, to begin with. So, Peter, is there any one thing that you would like to leave the audience with today?
Peter Preziosi:
I’d say, dream big.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s great.
Peter Preziosi:
If you can’t dream big, you’re, you can’t get there.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s right.
Peter Preziosi:
And I think that’s really important, and it was funny. I was watching a home makeover show once with one of these HGTV designers, Vern Yip.
Hiyam Nadel:
Yes.
Peter Preziosi:
But he was on a different show and he was making over a home for a woman and her family who gave so much back into their community, and he was surprising her. She knew that he was making over one section of her house, and then he, the surprise reveal was that he made over another part of her house. And when he brought her in to show her, she’s like crying. He’s like, are you okay? Do you like the design? Is that what you thought? She goes, It’s beyond my imagination, I couldn’t dream this, so, therefore, I couldn’t see this. And it makes me think about the ability to be able to dream big. And so many times when we’re going out and trying to advance an innovation or a project or a new way of doing things, we sometimes started out by thinking small. And if we think small, we’ll never be able to go to bigger heights. So I say dream big.
Hiyam Nadel:
That’s beautiful. I love talking to you, Peter, because I always learned so much from you. Now, if anybody in our audience would like to reach you, what’s the best way? Are you on LinkedIn?
Peter Preziosi:
I’m on LinkedIn.
Hiyam Nadel:
Perfect.
Peter Preziosi:
I have a LinkedIn account, that is a great way to reach out to me, message me, and I’d be happy to message you back.
Hiyam Nadel:
This was awesome, Peter, thank you so much for today.
Peter Preziosi:
Thanks so much.
OR SONSIEL Outro:
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