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By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
A recent study by the International Council of Nurses found that burnout rates in nursing were 40 percent before the pandemic, and now the figure has grown to 70 percent. I believe nurses are not burned out but drained out. I’ve seen the absolute devastation of burned land in the Colorado fires — land that will never be recovered the same. With the proper care, however, nurses and caregivers can recover. We can refill their wells by offering programs to give them specific tools to care for themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. This will rebuild their resiliency because people want to work for people who care for them. Forward-thinking, honorable companies establish cultures of caring to prevent burnout before it exhausts their staff. They make it that part of their mission statements, vision statements, and strategic plans. They don’t just tell employees to take care of themselves, they offer time-tested evidence-based programs to do so. Over and over I hear from drained-out healthcare workers, “I really want to take care of myself, but I don’t know where to begin.” Hospitals and healthcare organizations must make caring for their staff a top priority. After all, it is the best recruitment and retention tool. New recruits have a choice between numerous companies these days, and they will gravitate toward the ones that have programs and a commitment to care for them, mind, body, and spirit. Companies with cultures of caring have happier, healthier, more productive workers. And, as one CNO said, “Besides, it’s the right thing to do.” Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success!
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By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
This is one of my favorite stories I’ve read, called The Miracle of Forgiveness: For years, I had been unable to forgive my dad. I blamed him for everything that went wrong in my life. If he hadn’t been so strict, so overbearing, so distant, so volatile, I would have turned out to be a better person. Maybe I would have made better choices as an adult if he had just taken the time to show me he loved me. Eventually I came to realize that Dad was only human, just like I was. I understood that he did the best he could, based on what he knew at the time. I also came to know that as an adult, I could no longer blame anyone but myself for the bad choices I’d made. Once I accepted all of that, the miracle of forgiveness occurred. Privately, I forgave my dad, and eventually myself, for making so many poor choices. I was able to move on with a new resolve in life. With all these thoughts swirling in my head, I sat at Dad’s hospital bedside. He woke and said groggily, “I’m so sorry you have to do this.” He stared into my eyes, as if to penetrate the message. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.” At that moment I realized Dad didn’t know I had forgiven him. “Dad, it’s an honor to take care of you.” As I said those words, it seemed like it was someone else who had been so angry with him just a few years before. Dad looked up heavenward and whispered, “Thank you, God.” Then I knew he had been praying for this miracle of forgiveness for years too. Forgiveness is healing and freeing. Who are you going to forgive? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
Fear, grief, and isolation during the pandemic have triggered a national state of emergency in the mental health of America’s youth. Youngsters already faced significant mental health challenges, and the pandemic has made them worse, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. They report that children’s mental health is suffering. So much attention is placed on their physical health consequences and too little on their mental health. It’s a health crisis emergency. The statistics prove it. Between March and October 2020, the percentage of emergency department visits for children with mental health emergencies rose by 24% among children aged 5 to 11 and by 31% among children aged 12 to 17. There were 50% more suspected suicide attempt-related emergency room visits among girls aged 12 to 17 in early 2021 than in early 2019. Recent data also show that more than 140,000 U.S. children have suffered the loss of a primary or secondary caregiver during the pandemic. In the first six months of this year, children’s hospitals across the country reported a shocking 45% increase in the number of self-injury and suicide cases in 5- to 17-year-olds compared to the same period in 2019. Attention has focused on the physical health of our children. It’s time to give the same commitment and attention to their mental and spiritual well-being. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
During the height of the pandemic, many people said they had trouble concentrating. They couldn’t get excited about anything. It wasn’t burnout. It wasn’t depression. They just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. In the early, uncertain days of the pandemic, our brains were on high alert and our fight or flight instincts were at a fever pitch. But as the pandemic has dragged on, the acute state of anguish we found so hard to describe has given way to a chronic condition of languishing that colors our daily lives. Languishing Can Lead To Nurse Burnout Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. It dulls our motivation and disrupts our ability to focus, and it poses a serious risk to our mental health. Research suggests that the people most likely to experience major depression and anxiety disorders in the next decade aren’t the ones with those symptoms today, but the people who are languishing right now. And new evidence from pandemic health care workers in Italy shows that those who were languishing in the spring of 2020 were three times more likely than their peers to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Dealing With Languishing and Preventing Nurse Burnout Finding new challenges, enjoyable experiences and meaningful work are all possible remedies to languishing. Carve out daily time to focus on a challenge that matters to you — an interesting project, a worthwhile goal, a meaningful conversation. Sometimes it’s a small step toward rediscovering some of the energy and enthusiasm you’ve missed during all these months. For healthcare businesses, providing workers with a supportive and rewarding work environment can help reduce the prevalence of languishing and prevent nurse burnout both now and in the future. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
A unique twist on positive thinking was taken from the Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (just Seneca to his friends.) He was a busy guy born in the year 4 BC He was not only a philosopher, but a tutor, statesman, dramatist, humorist and an advisor to Emperor Nero. His unusual twist on positive thinking suggested that occasionally we try not to focus on the best case scenario, but the worst. Seneca advised, for example, that if you feared losing your wealth you should, “Set aside a certain number of days during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself all the while, ‘Is this the condition I feared?’” Do you suppose after that he said, “Well, this isn’t so bad!” One person, following Seneca’s advice, recently admitted that her greatest fear was to feel embarrassed. So she went to every table at a busy restaurant and said, “Hello” to every person there. Her overblown fears were cut down to size. No one shouted at her or attacked her; she just got a few strange looks. I realize I use this tactic too. In stressful or fearful situations I sometimes ask myself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” When I think that through, I often surmise, “Well, I could handle that.” Do you have a worst fear? Try this technique to help you to overcome it. Maybe you won’t wear a rough course dress and talk to people in a crowded restaurant, but what worse case scenario can you imagine…and handle? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
Sleep problems and a high level of burnout are associated with increased odds of COVID-19 among health care workers, according to a study published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore administered a web-based survey to healthcare workers in six countries with a high frequency of workplace exposure. The associations between sleep, burnout, and COVID-19 were examined. The researchers found that one-hour longer sleep duration at night was associated with a 12% reduced odds of COVID-19. Having three sleep problems was associated with 88% greater odds of COVID-19 compared with having no sleep problems. Reporting burnout “every day” was associated with increased odds of COVID-19, longer duration. Your body needs sleep in order to recover from the demands of the day and in order to process everything that happened, too. Selfcare for Healthcare is a comprehensive program aimed to reduce nurse burnout and improve self-care for nurses. Many facets of health and well-being are covered in our program, including how to encourage your staff to get better sleep. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
The majority of the time when I ask people, “What is your #1 priority?” they answer, “Family.” Yet most quickly admit that being together and staying connected can be a challenge in our frenetic lives. Throughout history, family mealtime was the predominant occasion to communicate and interact. These days, meals together are often infrequent and brief. One study reported that the average family mealtime lasts 20 minutes, though the benefits for children include better grades, lower body weight, lower cigarette and alcohol use, and better mental health. Kids or no kids, people who dine together have stronger relationships. One study found that adding just 3 minutes to a meal lessened the risk of family members being overweight. I found that hard to believe until I added up 3 minutes a day x 30 days and came up with 1 1/2 hours of connection time! So here are a few fun ways to make meals last longer:
Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
Reality TV shows and professional organizers attest to the amount of clutter we cram into our lives. My basement is living proof that we are accumulators. Just like my basement, our minds can become cluttered too. Mind debris gets in the way of our productivity and even our joy. You know it may be time for a brain clearing when your mind feels sluggish, you have stress overload, or you just want to numb out by staring at a TV or video screen. You can prevent the accumulation of brain garbage by setting up some filters. By screening incoming data, you can stop the insidious trash before it clutters things up. You can filter out gossip, negative political ads, stinkin’-thinkin’ conversations, and too much negative world news. Outmoded ideas, harmful thoughts, and negative feelings can be weeded out too, before they take root. Periodically, take time to sit quietly and focus within. Identify which thoughts are useful and supportive, and which are negative and a nuisance. Singer Jimmy Buffet recommends “mental floss.” Imagine your mind like your home, filled with rooms that have become cluttered. Prepare for spring cleaning. Visualize entering each room with a bucket of scrubbing supplies. Some rooms may hold thoughts and emotions; others memories; still other beliefs, attitudes and opinions. There may be a separate room for relationships. Imagine sorting which of these are good, from those that are no longer good for you. See yourself tossing out the worn and unwanted ones, and happily storing those you wish to keep. Finally, open the windows to let in fresh air and sunlight. Let this clean, bright feeling refresh you. Think how great it will be now with your new filters in place! You’ll prevent the mental garbage from accumulating and healthier happier thoughts will fill your mind. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
There is a lot in the media these days about being physically healthy, but what about mental health? And what is it really? Take a deep breath and read this definition from the World Health Organization: Mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. That’s a goal we should all shoot for. Mental health doesn’t mean we’re happy all the time, but that we should be able to function well in our personal, social, and work lives. Here are 10 tips for taking care of your mental health:
Pick one of these things to do today. Do another tomorrow…then another the next day…then another… Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
What is “the good life?” It’s the name of a rock band, an old movie, a Tony Bennett song, and numerous novels. But what is the good life for you? Is it determined by you, or someone else? Most people agree with the definition of “the good life” as a sense of satisfaction, adequacy, comfort, well-being, contentment, even in the midst of disappointments and suffering. But for some, this is in contrast to the assumption that enough is never good enough. To enjoy a good life, they need more. To me, this thinking is fostered by two things: excessive goal setting and the media. Setting goals to achieve success, to fulfill dreams, to have it all, and set no limits is great and honorable, but it can suggest that enough is not satisfying. Especially when it is combined with a second feature of our society, consumerism. The media makes it hard to be satisfied with enough. There are constant pressures from producers and advertisers to purchase and possess the latest and best. Social media sites snare people into comparing themselves with others who have more things, more work, more beauty…the list goes on and on. All this can make us feel insecure, or “lacking” in some way. Mentally, there is a lot of pressure if we are always striving and never arriving. This raises the question, “How much is enough for the good life today?” If we can’t answer that question, it suggests that we can never be sure that we have enough wealth, possessions or security. Think about it. Write it down. How much is enough for you? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! |
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