WE Bridge the Gaps: Our Origin Story

Wanda has been a committed advocate since she joined our volunteer network in 2019. In addition to being a volunteer with us, she started her career as a nurse and is also an End of Life Doula and a Board Certified Patient Advocate. She founded WE Bridge the Gaps, an education and consultancy group focused on patients being equal participants in the understanding and managing of their health. 

The idea for WE Bridge The Gaps (WBTG) has been with me for more than 45 years. In my teens, my father and younger sister died of cancer within a year of each other. This traumatic experience exposed a lack of humanness in our healthcare system. I thought I could make it better as I did not want others to experience the insensitivity, pain and isolation my family and I were subjected to. I became a nurse, obtained a business degree and then certifications in Just Culture, end of life care and patient advocacy.

I worked tirelessly to improve ‘the system’ and help create guardrails for when things went awry. It wasn’t until I spent over two years, not as a provider, but as a patient and support for family members and friends, that I realized not much has changed. I spent countless hours in medical, psychiatric and rehab hospitals, emergency rooms, skilled nursing facilities and doctors’ offices. I thought with my knowledge and experience, I could protect my loved ones. I was wrong. There was little I could do to influence change using the channels that were familiar to me. At every turn, I felt powerless, let down, and angry with our healthcare system.

During this same time, just about everyone I met, people I exercised with, neighbors, people in line at the grocery store, professional colleagues… shared their healthcare stories with me. Unfortunately, these usually involved access issues, patient neglect and/or harm. I thought about this a lot because along with these, there are many cases of excellent care, miraculous treatments, surgeries and recoveries. So what gives?

Day after day, I observed the stress levels of healthcare professionals, the over-reliance on checklists, the lack of transparency, the fast and dismissive talking with complex words and medical terminology, the outsized role of drugs as a quick fix, and the absence of curiosity when something or someone does not fit the script that medical science or the health system has provided.

I also observed patients and family members (myself included here) stressed, frightened, hesitant to ask questions, wanting answers, and showing a cultural deference or submissiveness to health professionals that prevented a much needed honest exchange of information.

Soon, I stopped trying to ‘work the system’. I learned to pause, listen to what was happening in my body, and trust my inner guidance. I was more present and able to approach each personal interaction with curiosity, vulnerability and kindness. This seemed more natural to me. I no longer relied on the ‘system’ to protect the care provided to family members, loved ones and myself. The results were remarkable. I felt energized, my family members felt energized and the staff providing care seemed kinder and more interested in what they were doing and how they were doing it.

I thought about a quote from Ghandi, ‘Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world, but to change ourselves.’ It’s taken me my entire adult life to understand that WE each have inner resources that my teenage self did not have access to. WBTG was born with the mission to teach patients, family members, and providers new ways to develop, listen to and rely on these inner resources as a catalyst for change.

THE WBTG TEAM

As I tapped into my own inner guidance, the creative aspects of WBTG took shape. WBTG is not about more checklists, policies, or scripts. It is about how WE can improve the ways WE acknowledge, serve and partner with each other. Once I got clarity for WBTG’s vision, team members appeared who were aligned with and offered unique skills to further the cause. Let me introduce my team.