Creating an Atmosphere Of Healing & Support within Hospital Settings: Serving the Needs of Both Patients and Staff

                                                                              

Nurses are the largest group of health care professionals providing direct patient care in hospitals, and the quality of care for hospital patients is strongly linked to the performance of nursing staff, according to an Institute of Medicine report.  In the first post of this Luminous Nursing Blog, I began to address the number one reason that most Nurses do not survive beyond the first three to four years of working in a hospital setting, and that number one reason is, of course, burn-out.  Burn-out is a condition whose symptoms include extreme stress created by unreasonable demands made upon nurses by doctors &  administration, overload of patient care and dysfunctional family dynamics on the ward with patients who are very ill,  excessive paperwork, charting and administrative demands, anxiety regarding whether or not one is perceived as functioning at full capacity & adequately as a Nurse, long shifts with no relief and often no breaks for meals or fresh air, and poor dynamics between nurses on the wards, as well as ill-equipped Nursing Leaders who actually have very little leadership training, thus leaving nurses without support and direction.  Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it?

According to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 10/2012,  throughout the past few decades, U.S. hospitals have faced cyclical shortages of nurses; in 2000 an estimated 126,000 hospital nursing positions were unfilled.  The percentage of nurses working in hospitals dropped from 59 percent in 2000 to a little more than 56 percent in 2004.  The current nurse shortage is driven by a broad set of factors related to recruitment and retention, among them, fewer workers, an aging workforce, and unsatisfying work environments, that have contributed to a different kind of shortage that is more complex, more serious, and expected to last longer than previous shortages. 

Too few new nurses are being trained (largely because of a shortage of nursing school faculty), but to a greater extent, the current shortage results from the reluctance of newly educated nurses to make their careers in hospitals. Nurses cite stress-related burnout and the large amount of time they must spend on non-nursing tasks as top reasons for feeling dissatisfied with their jobs; 43 percent of nurses report that they plan to leave their jobs within three years.  Thus, the average age of hospital nurses is in the mid-forties.

On average, nurses work eight and a half weeks of overtime every year.  Recent studies continue to show that taking care of too many patients and working overtime and long shifts (twelve &  sixteen-hour shifts are not uncommon) are associated with medical errors and poorer quality of care.

It would be correct to say that a kind of vicious cycle surrounds the nursing profession. Fewer people are working in nursing, which has led to a shortage. Because of the shortage, nurses who remain in hospital work must care for more patients under increasingly difficult working conditions. Because of these strained working conditions, more nurses leave the hospital workforce, thereby worsening the shortage and making recruitment of new nurses more difficult.  This is most certainly a vicious cycle that never ends, unless these vital issues are addressed adequately.

                                                                                

The nurse shortage also has important cost implications for hospitals. Although estimates vary widely, the cost of recruiting and training one new nurse for a medical-surgical floor is usually equal to 100 percent of a nurse’s annual salary, ($42,000–$60,000); that investment is much higher for an intensive care or emergency department (ED) nurse.

It is of vital importance that we must be concentrating on the underlying issues that can make the hospital a more appealing and functional workplace for Nurses and other hospital personnel.   This includes improving the work place culture among Nurses and administration,  along with other staff.  The RDW foundation’s objective is to help convert hospitals into places that are designed to promote healing, not just provide treatment; places where workers are engaged and supported in their jobs, and places where better work processes and culture increase institutional vitality and enhance patient care.  Now this is what we are talking about when we say that Change is necessary in order for transformation to take place in the field of Medicine and in Patient Care, and an important part of the change must come in the name of Caring for our Nurses.  Without Nurses, and Nurses Aides , there would be no care and no hospitals, as Nurses are the linch pins that hold a hospital together.  

Hospital nurses have difficult, demanding jobs; they need to feel inspired by their work and supported as professionals if optimal patient care is to be achieved.  In addition, a hospital is supposed to be a place in which healing is created and promoted on every level, from the quality of compassionate and competent care that is offered, to supporting the patient's needs for privacy, protection, serenity, nutritious meals, beauty, spiritual support, creativity, and a healing atmosphere.  All of these services  provide an opportunity for Healing and Restoration on every level.  This can also include the elements of Alternative Medicine that promote healing and emotional & spiritual support, including  Medical Massage, Acupuncture, Yoga, Meditation, Music Therapy, Therapeutic Touch, and Art therapy.  These modalities must also be offered to the Nurses and Staff, whose vulnerability to depression, addiction and burn-out issues create a slew of problems that can be completely avoided if we simply took good care of the Care -givers.  The level of Care that is also offered to staff as well as patients creates harmony among staff and a feeling of well being and appreciation that they are so deserving of.   In addition, there should be a Nurse Mentor who is available to support Nurses and assist them with issues such as burn-out and stress related symptoms.  These simple, low cost modalities create a general feeling of well being and tolerance, and an atmosphere of support and respect.

                                                                                                      With Love & Peace,

                                                                                                                 Sanatani Maa

From Burned Out Nurse to Luminous Healer: It's Your Choice. Be The Change!

                                                                                

Welcome to my Blog!  For all of you Nurses who have been Selflessly applying your life toward the Care, Healing and Transformation of your Patients, I applaud you! This Blog is for you; in support of you.  Whether you are a Nursing Student, a New Grad, exploring what you will do with your education now that you graduated, or a burned out vintage nurse, ready to drop out of the Nursing Field forever, I applaud You All, and I understand what life is like for you, because I am one of you.  You have given much of your life to care for people you don't even know, even when they have no appreciation for all the overwhelming stress, pain, exhaustion, burn-out you carry on their behalf, and for whom you have given up holidays with family, nights of restful sleep, and a normal eight hour work day, among other things.  Either way, Nursing is extremely demanding on so many levels, and if we do not take care of ourselves, we will most certainly fall into the downward spiral of Burn-Out.  This Blog is, in part, here to address this issue of Toxic Burn-Out not only in nursing, but in most groups of people who serve in the medical arena;  how it came to be, how it penetrates into the very core of the medical field and all who work within it.  How it can be a mirror for the dysfunction, ignorance, lack of awareness and utter lack of Healing that is the hallmark of modern day medicine.

This Blog is being offered as a way in which we, as Nurses & Healers can come together to create a better way of Being and of Serving.  We will attempt to work with all Nurses and Healers who are interested in Transformation of the Nursing Role and of Medicine, so that True Healing can take place within ourselves and with our Patients and their families.  We are going to bring about a Transformation of Medicine by utilizing The Healing Ways, both Ancient and New.  We will assist each other in becoming Instruments of Awareness, Healing, Love, Compassion and Truth, for it is only by transforming ourselves that we can hope to have any effect on the Healing of Others.  We are going to Reclaim the Heart & Soul of Healing by becoming Instruments of Transformation.  We will begin to study many of the ancient ways that have proven themselves over and over again, and we will integrate  those ways into the Transformation Healing ways of the Integrative Nurse.  We will study the ways of Consciousness, Awareness, Meditation, Prayer and Mantra.  We will explore the use of Herbs, supplements, Massage, Nutrition, Inner Energy Work, Breath Work, Yoga Postures, Mudra, Spiritual Power Tools, Integrative Medicine, Inner Alchemy and so much more.  This is the True Nursing Renascence.  Come and Join me, and let your Inner Healer Emerge in Full Power & Light!

                                                               

How many nurses do you know, including yourself (although it is so much easier to see those symptoms in others than it is to see it in yourself) who are in the throws of burn-out, to one degree or another?  Do you remember the term, Horizontal Violence, that we used in Nursing School to describe the work-place culture of the hospital environment in which everyone is working way beyond their own limits, stressed-out beyond measure, irritable, angry, frustrated and looking for someone to dump it on.  This group behavior grows and grows over time, and unless checked by at least one enlightened and conscious supervisor or manager, it becomes a form of workplace brutality. Yes, Brutality.  Inevitably, nurses take their stress and misery out on each other, hence, the term horizontal violence.  Does it have to be like this?  No, it most certainly does not.  Human beings were designed to evolve over time, and although I admit that most human beings seem to lack the ability to see and understand their own behavior,  thus making all of us suffer,  we have the capacity to learn and to grow.  Thus, as ape-like as we can be at times, we still have the capacity to shift our perceptions of what is, and to take a step toward the possibility of growth, enhanced understanding, greater awareness of how we interact with those around us, and how we can use our own "Potential-For-Goodness" in a Healing Way, a way that will bring Ease and Comfort, Love and Kindness into our environment, to be used as an agent of Healing Energy & Mutual Support and Encouragement rather than Brutality.  Do you see what I mean?  We have a choice.

                                                    

We always have a choice, in every situation in life.  I have been studying with a Beautiful Saint from India for decades now, and in India, there are many words that are used to describe subtle ideas and states of being that are normally very difficult to describe.  Take for instance, the Sanskrit word "Vasana".  A vasana can be defined as any subconscious quality that affects character. A Vasana can be described as a karmic residue, unconscious propensities, disposition, habit energy, thought, habit formation, habitual thoughts,  potential tendencies, habitual thoughts and habits that are present and active, but also below that level of the person's awareness, therefore unconscious in nature.  
So much of our thought patterns and perceptions are unconscious, and therefore they play out in a group environment in a way that can be damaging to the group as a whole, with everyone running around with unresolved, yet unconscious emotional patterns that get activated when others in the group incite a "churning of the pot," so to speak.  When you have a bunch of stressed out, unconscious people together, generally the pot is always simmering, and it takes only one small incident to get the pot heated up to a rolling boil over.  Once it boils over, there is no turning back; the damage has been done and more than likely, someone has gotten burned.  

                                                        
                                                   
Yet, if that is the case, than the opposite can also be true.  When people are together daily, usually under difficult, stressful circumstances such as in a hospital environment,  those deep vasanas have many occasions to make themselves known to us.  Hummm.  This is the gift, if we choose to pay attention to what those vasanas are trying to tell us.  The Gift is embedded in our ability to listen to what is arising within us as we are being triggered by someone else's words or actions.  In order for this gift to utilized, we must be able to stand back from our own thought processes and pay attention to what our subconscious mind is churning out for us to look at.  When this happens, we have many opportunities to simply pay attention to what is there, within us. It is in that rare moment of clarity and silence that we can make peace with what is there within us, waiting to be released from that dark place where it has been held captive, unable to be expressed. In that perfect moment, we can really begin to  understand the concept of compassion, for ourselves and for everyone else. This is where we all must begin.

The process of meditation is like this.  Meditation is nothing more than an attempt to give the mind a rest, by slowing down the incessant flow of thoughts that constantly assail us.  When one shuts ones eyes and attempts to calm the mind by emptying it of all thoughts, at first, this seems like a monumental and completely impossible task.  Thoughts will rise up, again and again, like an infinite supply of soldiers on the battlefield, where, when one gets shot down, a thousand more rise up against you.  When you pay attention to all the thoughts going through your mind, at first, the mind will rise up against you and the thoughts will come to you with even greater force, kicking, screaming and yelling all the way.  Is is only when we begin to use a counter force against this incessant flow of thoughts, such as a sound, a mantra or a prayer, used with repetition and concentration, that we are able to slowly find release from the hold our thoughts have on us.  As we learn to make meditation a daily practice and use this discipline to create order in our hearts and minds, that the hold our mind had over us slowly relaxes and we can perceive what is actually behind that flow of thoughts.  Once we establish this practice, the fruits of this discipline is deep inner peace, a sweetness that was never there before, and a sense of being connected to all that is.  Our minds shine with a new Light and a new Bliss.  We find ourselves being "happy for no reason," and our vibration, or the spiritual energy that we radiate out into the world, begins to have a powerful effect on those around us, even if they don't perceive it.  Yes, then we can really change the world, including those we work with, and those we care for.  Then, one day, Burn-Out will be a thing of the past.