By: Odalys Ferguson, MPH, LSSBB

When I walk into a project environment, my first thought isn’t the project schedule or departmental staffing. I’m not immediately focused on equipment inventories or how a new piece of technology will integrate with existing systems. My first question is simpler – and much bigger: How do we make this work seamlessly for the people who walk through these doors carrying so much?

And even more importantly, how can we inspire hope?

Clinical operations isn’t always considered the “hottest” topic in healthcare. But it’s one I’ve grown to love, because operations is where the patient experience is actually lived. It’s the point where intention meets reality. Operations sit at the intersection of people, processes, and spaces. When those elements work together, care feels supportive and intuitive. When they don’t, even care delivered by the most skilled and compassionate clinicians can feel confusing, exhausting, and overwhelming for patients and staff alike.

Improving that experience begins with one essential mindset: curiosity.

Why Curiosity Matters in Healthcare Operations

Curiosity asks the questions that too often go unasked in healthcare:

• Why does this process exist?
• Who was it designed for?
• Is it actually working for patients, families, and staff today?

Opening new spaces gives us a reason to question the status quo in a way that is intentional. In operational planning, curiosity gives us permission to pause, to take things apart thoughtfully, and to rebuild them around the patient experience. It challenges assumptions and exposes friction points that metrics alone don’t reveal.

But curiosity does something else that’s just as important: it builds trust with staff.

When teams witness leaders asking questions instead of assuming answers, it sends a clear signal that their expertise matters. The people doing the work every day often know exactly where the breakdowns live, where processes feel clunky, where workarounds have quietly become the norm, and where stress accumulates. Curiosity creates the space for those voices to shape better, more sustainable solutions.

Seeing the Experience Through a Human Lens

Sometimes curiosity leads to rethinking workflows. Sometimes it means redesigning spaces. Often, it’s about noticing the small moments that shape someone’s day in a patient care environment.

I remember observing a family sitting in an infusion room with a loved one for hours. They were exhausted, anxious, and hadn’t eaten all day. The clinical care was exceptional. Everything was functioning well from a medical perspective. But the environment surrounding them made meeting basic needs incredibly difficult.

The nearest place to get food required navigating multiple hallways, elevators, and unfamiliar signage. Leaving the unit felt stressful. They worried about missing an update from the care team. From an operational standpoint, nothing was “broken.” From a human standpoint, the experience was anything but seamless.

That moment stayed with me.

Operational planning isn’t just about throughput, capacity, or efficiency. It’s about designing environments where patients and families can still care for themselves while navigating some of the hardest moments of their lives.

• Can they easily find food?
• Can they step away for a few minutes without fear or uncertainty?
• Can they move through the space with confidence instead of confusion?

These details may seem small on paper. In reality, they shape how people experience care and how they remember it long after they leave.

Curiosity in Transition and Activation Planning

Now, working in transition and activation, curiosity feels more critical than ever. Opening a new clinical space or transforming an existing one forces us to ask better questions before day one. It requires us to look beyond design intent and operational diagrams and deeply consider how spaces will be used.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s preparedness grounded in empathy.

Curious operational planning centers the humans inside the system – patients, families, and care teams alike. It anticipates uncertainty, listens for hesitation, and designs flexibility into workflows and environments.

The best operational plans don’t just make systems run better. They make people feel better.

And in healthcare, that feeling matters just as much as anything we plan on paper.