Note from the ACDIS Associate Editor: The best of a big family

by Jess Fluegel

It’s hard to believe a month has passed since my introduction to ACDIS and the CDI profession. Starting this job, I expected the welcome challenge of writing about a subject I’ve never heard of. But I certainly didn’t expect to enter a whole new reality—and even more, get adopted into a huge, welcoming family.

When people ask the usual get-to-know-you questions, my answers often make me a spectacle. I grew up in a household of nine children, eight of whom were girls, six of whom shared birthdays. You read that right—there are three sets of twins! Most of our extended family lived nearby as well, so everyone was used to helping everyone within my home and my community. Especially among my sisters, we developed a culture of teaching, supporting, communicating, and giving each other space to grow.

As an adult, I’ve found too many careers subscribe to the “it’s a dog-eat-dog world” culture instead.  Professionals in most industries view each other at best as competition, at worst as a threat. Too often, one person’s failure is another man’s gain, and hearing my father’s perspective working as a health insurance broker while I grew up led me to believe the entirety of the healthcare industry was much the same.

Now, everyone can agree that there’s nothing wrong with a little friendly competition. But much more important is the value placed on kindness, support, community, and inclusivity. I’ve seen these qualities in abundance from ACDIS’ members and staff since the moment I got hired, when I was flown out to the ACDIS conference in Orlando—despite the fact I’d completed only one week of training—just so I could meet all the lovely people I would otherwise be working with remotely.

If you attended you might have noticed me, if only as the person walking around like the second shadow of Associate Editorial Director Linnea Archibald. But I definitely noticed all of you. I noted how each speaker and panelist put so much thought and effort into their topics, how leaders offered support not superiority, how attendees didn’t just ask questions but offered solutions. I saw collaboration in all its beautiful stages, from two attendees starting a conversation to a whole group of CDI professionals showing the research they’d completed together. I even got to know a few of you and was fortunate enough to receive your encouragement and advice personally.

When I started here, the staff warned me about a lot of things in advance—acronyms, for one. I don’t know how you all do it. Already I have a five-page document with all the terms I’ve jotted down and needed someone to explain, from the history of ICD-10-CM, to what an MS-DRG is, to the importance of IQR. And I keep adding more! They said it would take at least six months for me to feel like I know what people are talking about, and exponentially longer to actually know. Given that I’ve finished reading through The CDI Specialist’s Complete Training Guide but would utterly fail a test about all the different types of pneumonia, I’m confident of that prediction as well.

But the staff were right about one more thing: ACDIS is like a big extended family. Sure, there are tons of contrasting personalities and differences of opinion within the whole. But that only allows for better collaboration and progress, as ACDIS members work together towards the same goal of improving clinical documentation and patient care. This happens on the macrolevel as I saw at the conference, but also each day as CDI professionals teach, support, and encourage each other within their programs.

Being an apt judge of all a big family can entail, I affirm that ACDIS members have all its best qualities down.

Editor’s note: Fluegel is the associate editor for ACDIS. Contact her at jfluegel@acdis.org.