Walking Together: How Pinksocks Are Inspiring Compassion and Connection in Cancer Care
The charm of pinksocks lies in their ability to cultivate genuine connections.
In October of 2015, after fifteen years of working in the medical device space, I transitioned into the wild-west of health IT software. I made the jump because I knew there was a movement towards paperless clinical documentation due to the ACA. Also I knew health care was changing from the traditional fee-for-service to a more patient-centered, value-based care. Ultimately it was a tough decision leaving a Fortune 500 company but I trusted our new CEO who brought amazing energy and an awesome vision for the company.
My first few weeks on the job, I was able to attend a couple conferences and realized there were so many experts willing to share a ton of great information about the HIT space. I began scouring the internet to learn about everything HIT-related and all the acronyms that were new to me like HL7, FHIR, CCD, ADT, GA, EHR, MU, ONC, HHS, VBP, MSSP, CJR and more…
While I was looking up many of these acronyms, I found many of them within twitter hashtags. When I discovered a subject matter expert, I followed them and many of the users they also follow. Before long (probably due to those sneaky Twitter algorithms) I kept seeing a similar group of people that all centered around this boots and kilt-wearing persona of Nick Adkins. All of the crew seemed friendly, intelligent, passionate, patient-centered, disruption-focused and they all happened to wear pink socks in many of their pics (some of them even wore bow ties). At that point, I knew I needed to follow them, if for nothing else than to keep laughing as they made fun of such antiquities as faxes, pagers, and paper-based health records.
Around this time, I was selected to attend HiMSS for our company and I was overwhelmed with everything surrounding the conference. In preparing for the conference, I began following many of theSocial Media Ambassadors for HiMSS and noticed many them were related to this pink socks phenomenon as well. Because of that, I thought everyone would be wearing pink socks in Las Vegas so I did the most natural thing; I ordered a pair via Amazon Prime! They arrived a few days before the conference and I planned to wear them the first day.
When I walked out of my hotel room, heading to the first morning session, my sunglasses fell from my forehead and I found myself walking down the hallway in a suit wearing pink socks and sunglasses. Thoughts of Oceans Eleven passed through my head. I had to take a picture and tweet my pink socks debut so I pulled out my phone and realized it would make a pretty cool slow motion video, so I shot a few clips walking towards the phone. During breakfast, I completed the editing process and posted to the twittersphere.
The feedback on my tweet was great after Bill Bunting retweeted it and as a result, I became an honorary member of the pink socks tribe. Since then I have worn my pink socks to many other health care events as a badge of honor in making a statement to disrupt health care and get stuff done.
I congratulate everyone in the tribe for the momentum of this the incredible movement. Everyone in the pink socks tribe is amazing and I can’t wait to see what happens in the future!
The charm of pinksocks lies in their ability to cultivate genuine connections.
…you being you has extraordinary power! Use it for good.
Moments like these are a testament to the
profound influence and love a mother holds in her child’s heart.
Then Ms. Reynolds looked at me and said “we’re changing the world.” And, I replied with gratitude, “yes, you are.”
One Response
Just met Nick at Portland Airport. He was wearing a kilt and hat and he gave me a pink socks pin and a pair of socks! Intriguing lovely man. I am now investigating Pinksocks.life. Serendipity and Love abound on the planet!