The document discusses how some healthcare organizations have adopted a language of love in their communications and culture in order to improve patient experience, employee morale and retention, and diversity and inclusion. It provides examples of organizations like HCA Healthcare, Renown Health, and Vidant Health that emphasize love, caring, and kindness in their branding and culture. The document argues that reinventing the language used in healthcare with more positive terms can help transform organizational culture.

1. Healthcare Communications
and the Language of Love
Dan Dunlop, Jennings Health
HITMC Conference – Boston, MA
May 2022

2. It’s About Love

3. Issues That Matter
• Staff Retention & Employee Satisfaction
• Talent Recruitment
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
• Organizational Culture

4. Military Language in Business
Often an incongruence between the subject matter and the
militaristic language we use:
– Campaigns
– Targets
– War room
– Lines of attack
– Escalation
– Execution
– Subordinates
– Market Intelligence
– Tactics and Strategies
“The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s
creation.” Jonathan Larson

5. Military Language in Business
• The word “company” derived from a military origin.
• Managers are occasionally referred to as Lieutenants.
• The war metaphor can justify de-humanizing or unkind
behavior
• Is the cross-town competitor really the enemy?
• War is also inherently male. Creation and love aren’t
nearly as exclusionary.
• The language of war can be severely limiting to
innovation, equity, and inclusion.

6. “As communicators, we are tasked with helping our clients create
holistic, thoughtful, and relevant plans that are meaningful to
audiences and that will sustain organizations. We want our
plans, reports, and language to be sturdy, humane, and
purposeful. And yet we are trained in a language steeped in a
few thousand years of military escapades, colonialism, and
subordination.”
(Source: https://manoverboard.com/marketing-and-
military-language/)
Military Language in Business

7. “Want to change culture? Give people different experiences
through changing the language that leadership uses, telling
stories that reinforce new values, and being conscious about
what's formally and informally celebrated and rewarded.
If we want to reinvent business (and society), we need to
reinvent the language that shapes our mental models and
culture.”
(Source: Soren Kaplan, “Sexist Military Language Infiltrates Business
Culture, Making It Tougher for Women to Rise in the Ranks,” Inc. Magazine,
January 2020)
Military Language in Business

8. Love is Free. Guac is Extra.
“There’s nothing more powerful in someone’s mind than to be needed, and to feel valuable
— for me to let you know I need you, that I care about you, that I want to help you become
your best, while we both together achieve this vision and mission that I want to achieve.”
Monty Moran, NRN Interview, 9/17/21

9. Love. It’s What Makes a Subaru a Subaru.

10. Southwest Airlines. A Legacy of Love.
“Much of Southwest’s marketing and internal material is based on the concept of spreading love
and care. The heart has become the carrier’s main visual symbol of this commitment to service,
and love is a clear metaphorical device in their mission statement and their service
commitment.”
https://marker.medium.com/how-companies-cleverly-deploy-metaphors-9acc97564e37

11. Shouldn’t Healthcare Organizations Adopt
More Caring, Loving, Nurturing Language?

12. Why Add Love to Your Lexicon?
• Often a necessary element of cultural
transformation; how we express
ourselves to colleagues and patients
• Improved patient experience – patient
satisfaction and healing environment
• Improved employee morale/retention
• Improved recruitment
• Transformation of organizational culture
• Helps to eliminate institutionalized
masculinity
• Creates space for equity and inclusion
• Love works during good times and bad.
In horrible times, you can still be loving.
A symbol of love in
the AHHC logo!

13. Love Language
People express and desire to receive
expressions of love differently:
• Love Language #1: Words of Affirmation
• Love Language #2: Quality Time
• Love Language #3: Giving/Generosity
• Love Language #4: Acts of Service
• Love Language #5: Appropriate Physical
Touch
Source: Dr. Gary Chapman ,“The Five
Love Languages,” 1992

14. Pink Socks & Love
• A movement that started in healthcare
• Pinksocks.life
• Defined by gifting and kindness
• Pinksocks.life

15. Pink Socks & Love
• A movement that started in healthcare
• Changing the world with heart speak, hugs,
kindness, and gifting.
• Pinksocks.life
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=depwRY0Lzno

16. Healthcare Organizations
Adopting the Language of Love

17. HCA Healthcare

18. HCA Healthcare

19. HCA Healthcare
https://youtu.be/FHA6L_PNhPM

20. Renown Health

21. Renown Health
“Renown is a place of hope and
determination, health and
healing. We honor people’s lives.
We care for each other. We love,
we heal, we connect, we serve,
we give back, we invest in our
people and our communities and
we provide opportunities for
growth. We believe in respect for
all, and we stand with those
looking for peaceful change, an
end to unnecessary brutality and
a brighter future.” Dr. Tony
Slonim, CEO, Renown Health

22. Renown Health

23. Vidant Health
“We believe that how team
members experience each other and
Vidant, is how patients will
experience their care. With love as a
guiding intention, results in team
engagement, quality, safety and
patient experiences continue to
improve.”
Julie Kennedy Oehlert, Vidant Health

24. Vidant Health
Institute for Healthcare Improvement blog, Are
Love and Empathy the Keys to Health Equity?
Julie Kennedy-Oehlert | Tuesday, June 12, 2018

25. Vidant Health
Mindfulness Meditation
http://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/are-love-and-empathy-the-
keys-to-health-equity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvhETc2lY2g

26. Allina Health
• “When life gets tough, we work to surround the
consumer with all the care they need in a way that
makes them feel loved,” says Jeff Shoemate, Chief
Marketing and Communication Officer at Allina Health.
“We talk about love a lot, because at the end of the day,
that sense of security is the ultimate delivery of what
we are trying to do.”
• https://nrchealth.com/whats-love-got-to-do-with-it-
insights-on-healthcare-marketing/

27. How To Integrate Love Into Your Organization?
• Can organizations be loving and caring?
• Creating an environment where your employees
become ambassadors.
• This is about organizational culture.
• Modeling love and kindness.
• Revisiting your brand position.
• Articulating your brand with intentionality.
• Use tools like a brand manifesto and brand book.
• Living your brand.

28. This Is Not How You Show Love

29. Celebrating Your Team

30. Celebrating Your Team

31. Celebrating Your Team

32. Celebrating Your Team

33. Celebrating Your Team

34. Celebrating Your Team

35. Celebrating Your Team

36. Take Aways
• Organizational culture is central to recruitment and
retention; also central to diversity and equity initiatives
• Culture must be authentic (employees can smell
marketing BS a mile away)
• Language can be dehumanizing and exclusive
• To reinvent our organizations, we must reinvent the
language we use
• Love and kindness fill a void in most healthcare
organizations

37. Contact Information
Dan Dunlop, Principal, Jennings Health
Marketing
Email: ddunlop@jenningsco.com
Twitter: @dandunlop
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dandunlop/