Courtenay Bruce | NGPX

NGPX 2025

November 17 - 19, 2025

Westin Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs, CA

Courtenay Bruce

Associate Chief Experience Officer Houston Methodist

Professor Bruce is currently Director of System Patient Experience at the Houston Methodist Hospital System and associate professor at the Institute of Academic Medicine at Houston Methodist and an adjunct associate professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center. She helps develop, support, implement, monitor, and sustain patient and family experience initiatives and oversees several patient-centered digital technology programs and pilot projects. In terms of her research productivity, Professor Bruce has been awarded 4 local grants, served as a co-investigator on multiple federally-funded patient-centered outcomes research grants, and has written over 65 articles in peer-reviewed medical, legal, and ethics journals. She has served as first author in over 50 articles devoted to patient and family decision making and communication preferences. She has served as first author of 2 textbooks and 5 book chapters. With regard to her teaching activities, Professor Bruce has taught over 3,000 medical students and residents, nurses, and other allied healthcare professionals. In recognition of her teaching effectiveness and educational contributions, she has been awarded the Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Excellence Award in Enduring Education, the Norton Rose Fulbright Excellence Award in Educational Leadership, and the Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching and Evaluation. Professor Bruce has developed and/or sustained at least 15 ethics committees for various hospitals and has served as an ethics consultant to several others. She conducted over 4,000 ethics consultations in tertiary and community hospitals throughout the nation. As a result of her contributions to ethics, she has been selected for numerous leadership positions on national committees for bioethics and was a representative on the ethics committee for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). She has a doctorate of Jurisprudence, a Master's degree in Bioethics, a certification in mediation, and a law license for the state of Texas. She completed a two-year fellowship in bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic. She was also among the first cohort of nationally-credentialed clinical ethicists. She is also a certified professional healthcare quality consultant (CPHQ).

Day 3: Shaping What’s Next: Designing the Future of Experience

8:40 AM Case Study Collaboration: Developing and Implementing a Course Focused on Narrating Care: How it Can Impact Behaviors and Results

This session explores the creation and implementation of a system-wide course designed to enhance the narration of care and its impact on clinician behavior and patient experience outcomes. Presenters from Houston Methodist will outline the course content, observational methods used to assess clinician behavior, and the resulting improvements—highlighting significant gains in domain scores across all eight hospitals and in 70% of participating units. Structured as an interactive workshop, the session will provide attendees with replicable tools, key learnings, and an implementation framework to support adoption within their own organizations.

  • Describe course development and implementation for strengthening narration of care behaviors
  • Provide practical guidance for other hospitals to validate and observe clinicians to see whether and how their behaviors comport or deviate from what is taught in the course
  • Show how the course resulted in improvement performance in patient experience

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Courtenay.

Download The Latest Agenda