Care Takes Many Kinds of Work

Jean Chantra and Fernando Hurtado obtain prime worker honors for his or her work to enhance care and help households and colleagues.

Jean Chantra helps hospital groups use information to make care safer for kids. Fernando Hurtado helps lead a vacation toy drive for households spending the season within the hospital and has coordinated a gathering for households remembering kids who’ve died. Their work at Stanford Medication Youngsters’s Well being addresses totally different wants, however each assist make caring for kids and households a shared effort.

For Chantra, which means creating not simply higher methods to measure care, however groups whose members really feel snug asking questions and fixing issues. For Hurtado, it means anticipating wants and dealing with sensible particulars so colleagues can deal with the households they serve.

That work was acknowledged on the thirty fifth Annual Worker Achievement Awards. Chantra, director of Scientific Effectiveness and Analytics, obtained the 2026 Excellence in Management Award, whereas Hurtado, Venture Coordinator for Palliative Care, Household Steering, and Bereavement Program, obtained the 2026 Grace Award, Worker of the Yr, Stanford Medication Youngsters’s Well being’s highest particular person recognition.

Turning information right into a dialog

Earlier in her profession, Chantra labored with information in analysis, the place publication typically marked the tip of an evaluation. Well being care high quality enchancment provided a special alternative: to see findings turn into the premise for a dialog, a choice and a change in care.

“Information is what will get a workforce collectively to make care safer for the following affected person and household,” Chantra stated.

Her work consists of creating the standard, security and repair dashboard and a well being fairness measurement framework. The framework is designed to standardize how information is collected, analyzed and used, serving to groups establish and consider disparities and information high quality enchancment efforts towards extra equitable outcomes.

But when Chantra displays on what she is proudest of, she factors to her workforce relatively than a dashboard or framework.

“I’ve labored deliberately to construct a tradition the place individuals really feel snug asking questions, sharing information, and studying from each other,” Chantra stated. One measure of success, for her, is whether or not a workforce has the arrogance, experience and relationships to maintain its work with out relying on anyone particular person.

She realized the worth of that independence from leaders who invested in her growth. Chantra credit mentors and colleagues together with Grace Lee, MD; Jessey Bargmann-Losche; Terry Platchek, MD; and Ndidi Unaka, MD, with giving her room to develop her personal judgment. Fairly than pairing an issue with a prescribed answer, they trusted her to work by complicated challenges and develop an strategy.

Their instance informs how she leads now: outline the problem, provide help and resist the urge to instantly provide a solution. Creating psychological security for questions and studying is a part of that work, not separate from it. Her management recognition displays each the development efforts she advances and the individuals she helps put together to maintain them.

Chantra additionally values colleagues’ willingness to look at efficiency candidly and share their experience. In that surroundings, information serves as greater than a scorecard. It provides individuals a place to begin for discussing the place care is working effectively and the place it wants to enhance.

Protecting the deal with households

Serving to colleagues do their work takes a special type for Hurtado. He helps Household Steering and Bereavement, Palliative Care, CORE and Religious Care, applications that accompany sufferers and households by tough and deeply private experiences. His colleagues describe somebody who notices wants earlier than they’re voiced and brings order and calm when circumstances turn into sophisticated.

On the first Annual Day of Remembrance, that steadiness mattered when the occasion encountered surprising technical challenges. Hurtado had coordinated the gathering to offer bereaved households a spot to recollect and honor their kids. As issues arose, he helped maintain the occasion shifting, supported his colleagues and remained current with households.

His service additionally extends to households spending the vacations within the hospital. For years, Hurtado has helped lead the vacation toy drive and distribution in partnership with Ronald McDonald Home. The hassle brings moments of pleasure and normalcy to households throughout their hospital keep.

The remembrance gathering and toy drive are seen examples of his work. Colleagues’ nominations additionally describe the on a regular basis interactions round these efforts: the humor, encouragement and kindness he brings to work that may be complicated, emotional and pressing. Their accounts emphasize not simply the duties he completes, however the expertise of working alongside him.

That help helps rising applications keep linked. Working throughout groups and disciplines, Hurtado supplies sensible help that permits colleagues to focus extra absolutely on sufferers, households and each other.

Twelve colleagues from throughout the group nominated him for the Grace Award, reflecting working relationships that stretch past a single program or occasion. His nominators linked his on a regular basis actions to the group’s PCARES values. Their accounts present how the excellence, dedication and dedication to mission acknowledged by the award take form in every day service to sufferers, households and colleagues.

Chantra provides groups instruments to look at care and room to develop their very own judgment. Hurtado helps colleagues maintain their consideration on households, together with when plans change. Their contributions take totally different kinds, however neither ends with a accomplished activity. The work continues in what another person is ready to do.