Sara Johnson, senior strategic services associate for Duke Gastroenterology, is featured this week in a Duke Today article on entrepreneurship in the work place.
Keep reading for an excerpt from the article:
A common image of an entrepreneur is someone driven by ideas, unafraid to bet on themselves and forever in the process of starting a new venture.
Across Duke University and Health System, there are employees who have those qualities and use their creativity and drive to improve how things get done.
Sara Johnson, a senior strategic services associate for Duke Gastroenterology, falls squarely into that category.
She hadn’t worked at Duke long in 2014 before she began thinking of ways to tackle the high rate of patients missing scheduled procedures. The root of the problem came from an inconsistent method of contacting patients, leading to missed appointments.
Johnson took it upon herself to craft a solution and came up with a standardized pre-procedure contact protocol that could be synched with patients’ charts. Her idea was implemented and cut down on missed appointments.
That entrepreneurial thinking helped Johnson earn a Duke Presidential Award in 2015.
“Don’t be afraid, some of the best solutions come out of some of the craziest ideas,” Johnson said. “Never be afraid to say something out loud. Some of it may not work, but some of it could be amazing.”
Here are a few tips from Duke experts on how, like Johnson, you can harness your inner entrepreneur and generate positive change.