Mistakes in Houses and Hospitals: Grace Bourke on Trust, Verification, and Lasting Improvement

My guest for Episode #323 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Grace Bourke, Consulting Director of the Performance Excellence Practice at Baker Tilly. With nearly 40 years of experience in healthcare quality improvement and industrial engineering, Grace has worked in clinical care, biotech, global public health, and senior leadership roles at organizations including Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health. Episode page Grace shares a very personal favorite mistake — the challenges of building a new home that turned into a nightmare of mold, leaks, and structural flaws. What began as a house problem quickly became a more profound lesson in trust, verification, and speaking up — themes that resonate far beyond construction and directly into the world of healthcare. “Trust and verify becomes trust and vigilant, educated verification.” – Grace Bourke She reflects on how her tendency to trust inspections and processes, while ignoring her own instincts, parallels what often happens in healthcare systems when leaders or staff don’t feel psychologically safe to raise concerns. Grace connects her experience to the importance of leadership accountability, patient safety, and continuous improvement, noting that healthcare still struggles to admit mistakes and act decisively to prevent harm. We also talk about the role of psychological safety, second opinions, and lifelong learning, both in our personal lives and in healthcare. Grace shares how hobbies like glass fusing remind her that safe spaces for experimentation and “planned mistakes” can strengthen resilience, creativity, and growth. “We can’t fix the whole world, but we can fix our small piece — and that makes a difference.” – Grace Bourke Questions and Topics: What’s your favorite mistake? Was the mistake choosing this builder, or not verifying inspections before closing? Why do you think you didn’t speak up more during the building process? How does this experience connect to psychological safety in healthcare? What have you learned about yourself from going through this? How do you put the house problems into perspective? Has the builder taken responsibility or apologized? What parallels do you see between this home-building experience and healthcare improvement? Why is it so hard for healthcare organizations to admit mistakes? What role does leadership play in creating safer systems? How do hobbies like glass fusing help you practice learning from mistakes? What do you mean by “the mistake you’re planning”? What gives you hope for improvement in healthcare, despite the challenges?