Stress Flowers and Love

08 Mar 2022 2 Comments

by shauna in family, Food for thought, Lent, marriage, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

It is hardly surprising that healthcare workers are stressed, no matter what their role. I am not at the bedside directly, but my job is to get patients to beds from emergency room, surgery, or wherever they may happen to come from at our facilities. Recent changes to our leadership and processes have made an already difficult situation even worse. My husband works at the same hospital as a BioMed tech, so he understands the atmosphere of the hospital currently. So when I had texted that yesterday was a most definitely awful Monday, I came home to dinner ready and flowers in the table. With me on 12 hour shifts, he has discovered it is most helpful to have dinner prep done or underway by the time I get home if we want dinner before 9 pm. The one consistent thing in my life since our marriage has been dinner with him after I get home. For 30 years we have called when we get off work and said “I am on my way”, whether we are on time or delayed. But the flowers last night were a special surprise that he doesn’t usually do. Valentine’s Day he typically will buy a live rose plant to replant outside rather than “dead flowers,” as he puts it. Our dining room table is usually a chaotic mess of whatever hasn’t found a home in a drawer, file, or the shred box. Projects that he needs to fix, junk mail, books I am reading or want to read (because if those get to a shelf, they may or may not get read…), you name it, it all lays in a pile that would drive most professional home organizers up the wall. Marie Kondo does not live here, I do.

So as I review emails, texts, and my Lent devotional, and sip my coffee, I gaze at the wonder of pink lilies just opening their buds. These are a gentle reminder that my husband loves me and wants to make me happy. I also am reminded that long ago Jesus said, “…even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matthew 6:29) as he reminded his disciples that worrying is pointless. So I take comfort that I can try again another day to learn from my mistakes, and do better.

How to Bounce Back From Failure – Michael Hyatt

30 Jan 2021 Leave a comment

by shauna in Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

I personally believe that it is in times of failure, that the most important lessons are learned. You find the drive within yourself to get back up, to persevere, to keep going. 
— Read on michaelhyatt.com/how-to-bounce-back-from-failure/

Even though this article is written from a “business” perspective , it is also true of health care professionals dealing with the stresses of work. When patients die in spite of the best efforts of the health care team, we view that as failure, because our goal is healing and returning patients to their loved ones whole. Often we cannot accomplish that, and we become filled with self doubt.

Taking care of ourselves is more important than ever. If we don’t, who will?

Changing With the Times

20 Oct 2015 Leave a comment

by shauna in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

I was told just fresh out of nursing school that I would need to learn to be flexible, and that the healthcare world was going to change. Now, 35 years later, it has, and yet it hasn’t. The media is so full of talk about the Affordable Care Act, Congress, and the evils  of insurance that one wonders what the “change” really is.  But in nursing, and in the hospital setting, changes are big and not necessarily in the right direction. We talk about productivity instead of what we can REALLY do for our patients. Administration makes changes based on budgets and bottom line profit numbers, and yearly at the fiscal changeover we are threatened with job cuts and mergers because “we just aren’t making any money anymore.” 

So the actual number of beds are cut that we can place patients in. And yet the patients STILL come, and they are sick . REALLY sick. But we are still hearing “do more with less”. Patients and their families are angry when they get here because it has taken so long to get care–because they have been telling caregivers they don’t feel well, they feel they were not listened to.  And it still falls back on the staff, whose hands are tied. 
“Do more with less”…right. 

Tell that to the patient who just wants to feel like someone cares, and who wants to get well.