Week 378

Positive post Sunday, May 26, 2024…. Week 378.  Spoiler alert for my colleagues from SoCalGas who are also my friends on Facebook.  This is tomorrow’s Health and Safety Message.

At SoCalGas, in an effort to advance our safety culture, we have an executive share a Weekly Safety Message with all our employees each Monday.  It is my privilege to share the message tomorrow.  I’ve chosen to share a Health and Safety Message in hopes that talking about my recent experience with open heart surgery will encourage others to act, preventing serious injury or illness.  My hope is the same for those who read this post. 

Here’s the message.

Before I share this week’s Health & Safety Message, please join me on this Memorial Day in a moment of reflective silence in honor of the brave men and women who paid the ultimate price for our freedom and who kept us safe at home and abroad.  May they be resting in peace and their families be comforted by knowing they are all heroes in the truest sense.

Dear health and safety leaders (aka, all SoCalGas employees),

I’m grateful to be here to share this Health and Safety Message!

As I shared on our recent Tuesday morning weekly safety call, I recently experienced a near miss and had emergency open heart surgery. 

My deepest appreciation goes out to those of you who reached out to me and my family during this challenging time.  Your prayers and well wishes strengthened me and comforted my family.

Consider me “old school”, but I still believe we are a family here at SoCalGas, a family that supports each other, our families, and the communities we serve, especially in times of need!

As I was reflecting on my near miss, and our safety culture, I reaffirmed my belief that health is a foundational part of a strong safety culture.  Just like our families and coworkers depend on us to work and return home safely, they also depend on us to take care of our health.  Our safety culture aspires to learn from leading indicators (job and driving observations, sharing near misses, stopping the job etc.) to prevent future incidents and accidents.  Shouldn’t we take the same approach to our health, focusing on the leading indicators to identify and prevent current and future health issues?

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups (one person dies every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease).  I’m fortunate that I am not one of those statistics and it’s my hope that my experience and what I share below encourages you to Stop the Job, do a self-assessment and take action as appropriate.  This may save your life.

As you can imagine, there is a great deal written about heart disease prevention.  I found the link and list of preventative measures from Kaiser Permanente below to be helpful and actionable.  I encourage you to click the link and read the list which goes into more detail.

Preventing Heart Disease | Kaiser Permanente

• Make healthy choices (diet, exercise, rest, healthy weight, stop smoking, limit alcohol)
• Watch for signs and symptoms (chest pain, shortness of breath, weakness, sudden weight gain, high blood pressure or irregular heartbeats)
• Get screened regularly (helps identify and track risk)
• Know your family history (helps doctor personalize plan and prevention)

The above list of preventative measures is from health care professionals.  As a two-time survivor of open-heart surgeries (affectionately known as a “redo” in the cardiothoracic surgery world), I’d like to share my list of lessons learned.

• Being in good physical, mental and spiritual fitness is critical to both prevention and survival.
• Scheduling and completing timely physical checkups can detect early signs of heart disease (being too busy is not an excuse).
• Knowing your numbers (blood pressure, cholesterol, heart rate etc.) can help identify early signs of heart disease.
• If you feel something, do something.  When in doubt, check it out (don’t ignore the signs).
• Listening to your body, with knowledge of the leading indicators (chest pain, shortness of breath, reduced physical performance etc.), and seeking medical help can be the difference between life and death (it was for me, but I should have acted sooner!!).
• Seek additional testing and consultation until you get a full understanding of symptoms you are experiencing.

Although as you might imagine, this was difficult to write and share, I do so in hopes that my experience encourages you, your employees or family members to act (schedule that physical you have been putting off, look into that pain you have been experiencing, begin or restart your physical fitness plan).  You may have heard the saying “Ideas without action are not ideas, they’re regrets”.  When it comes to our health and safety, there should be no regrets!

Let me leave you with a few questions.

What measures are you taking to ensure the safety and reliability of your cardiovascular system?

Are you listening to your body and taking action?  No regrets!!

In good health,

Dan