WHO RUN THE WORLD, GIRLS GIRLS
Tags: Covid Diaries, Beyonce, Design Thinking, International Womens Day, Healthcare

I was telling my sister early last week how I don’t remember much about my childhood. Some songs though have not left my memory and Beyonce’s 2011 single “Who runs the world, girls girls” is one of them. I checked the video out on youtube and it has a whopping 503million views. Not so surprising, considering it is Beyonce we are talking about here. I bet you are already moving your body slightly or humming the lyrics to the song as you read this article. I was thinking about something entirely different when the song came to my head. A flash into 2020 just made me see how it seemed like a disease was running the world. COVID-19 is that terrible boss who has no empathy. But waiiitt, before I dive into the gist on the bad boss, I figured there is no better time to celebrate our precious women than now as we mark Women’s History Month in certain parts of the world.

credit: cellular news

My shout-out goes to all the women in all our flavours. Irrespective of your choices, you are relevant and have great value in your uniqueness. Your feminine energy does magic and there is no balance without you. To sisters, you’re an amazing support system. To the mothers, you keep life going, no continuity without you. To those focused on family building, there is no tangible way to pay for such sacrifice, society would be worse without you. To our representatives in the workspace, you are our chance of inclusion. And to those doing multiple of these things, I take a bow for you!

Cheers to all the ways we’ve made the world a better place… cheers to loving one another and more achievements to brag of.

Back to our bad boss gist. In so many ways not ignorant to you, COVID-19 showed us how__ (fill in the blank; anyone you consider best-It/He/She) was desperate to be the boss. Not a nice one though, all__ wanted was for us to be isolated and not move around with our co-workers.

credit: LOCKTON

But, really that is so mean and inhumane; we’re not used to doing life without each other. Anyway, I am glad his tenure is almost over. Seriously speaking, we can’t avoid all future bad bosses, but there are ways we can dethrone them from such powers as COVID had on us. Many articles have been written on preparing for future pandemics, but an approach I wish we put more attention to in Nigeria, for instance, is on Patient-centered interventions. In my last article, I talked briefly about Patient-centered care. Eliminating the virus was important, but not so much attention was given to total wellbeing. As WHO states, health is not merely the absence of disease, it is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. Our approach was not properly centered on the needs of the patient but rather so much power was given to COVID to guide our decision-making.

Some of the countries with the best responses to COVID-19 from Germany to Taiwan to New Zealand to Iceland and many others had women leaders a Forbes article stated. Truth, Love, Tech, Decisiveness were tools used by these women as stated in the article. “Generally, the empathy and care which all of these female leaders have communicated seem to come from an alternative universe than the one we have gotten used to” stated Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in the article.

Oops!! You thought I was done bragging about women. Sorry to burst your bubble, the truth is the empathic nature of women has been mistaken for a weakness in women in leadership and it is exciting how this nature has proven useful.

Health design thinking as well as diligently following through with the action plan is a better way to approach challenges in healthcare. The principles of this approach drive human-centered innovative solutions to real-world health challenges. Value the patient, let their needs influence decision making.