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LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine’s Rohan Walvekar, MD, Takes an Entrepreneurial Approach to Spreading Positivity

Dr. Rohan Walvekar, ENT and Head Neck Cancer Surgeon with LSU Health Sciences, has always been a problem-solver. He learned from his parents, both doctors, to strive for a life rooted in the belief that in working to spread positivity, people will send positivity back to us.

He came to New Orleans ready to implement his training in head and neck oncology and teach a technology allowing doctors to endoscopically manage salivary gland disorders.

Since then, the LSU Department of Otolaryngology has become a leading referral center in the United States for this procedure and Dr. Walvekar, serving as the Mervin L. Trail Endowed Chair in Head and Neck Cancer at the LSU Health Sciences Center, is considered one of three key opinion leaders in the nation relative to this surgery.

Dr. Walvekar strives to maintain positivity in his own medical career, and it comes as no surprise that he began to notice he and the medical professionals around him were working so intensely they had no time to offer each other support, feedback or recognition.

“It seemed that in the busy moments, compassion and kindness were forgotten or taken for granted. Not purposefully, but we just didn’t have the time,” Dr. Walvekar said. “Those values, compassion and kindness affect relationships with our colleagues and our patients. We need to keep them as a top priority.”

In a hectic hospital setting, there are countless reasons recognition and support become an afterthought in favor of efficiency.

Research shows that employees who receive frequent feedback (positive and negative) from managers and peers rate their workplace happiness higher, stay at their positions longer, and work harder knowing there’s kindness and positivity at the other end of their actions.

Dr. Walvekar took this research and created nDorse, a social media-style, computer-based app promoting positivity and recognition in the workplace. The app enables doctors, nurses and other employees to give meaningful feedback and recognition to their fellow healthcare professionals in a dynamic, familiar and easy to use live feed platform.

Through nDorse, hospitals can establish custom recognition programs. By implementing their own core values, each “nDorsement” becomes an award nomination, ensuring the app is working to improve workplace morale in a meaningful, yet efficient, way.

Dr. Walvekar, a busy doctor himself, designed the app to be efficient and take no longer than a 30 second elevator ride to create and post an “nDorsement” to the live feed.

nDorse is being adopted by medical communities throughout the city. Dr. Peter DeBlieux, Chief Experience Officer at University Medical Center New Orleans, views nDorse and Dr. Walvekar as positive forces.

“Dr. Walvekar is a recognition champion and thought leader,” DeBlieux said., “UMC has benefitted from his tremendous engagement and talent. nDorse has helped UMC operationalize our employee recognition program. The results are exceedingly positive.”

The app’s measurability is just as important to employers as the positive reinforcement is to the employees who use it. Hospitals can run reports on departments, individuals, core values or the custom award nominations. It provides a useful tool when deciding on promotions, new hires or other incentive programs.

Spreading positivity through nDorse, in Dr. Walvekar’s opinion, is a win-win. The least it can do is put a smile on someone’s face. The most it can do is improve an entire workplace culture leading to happier employees and, in turn, happier patients.

Dr. Walvekar is the Mervin L. Trail, M.D., Chair in Head & Neck Oncology. To support his research, click here…

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