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Jul 26 2012
Love0

Rest – another magic lever

By Clinician

I’m on vacation with my family on Cape Cod, playing, eating, napping, and swimming. For best health we need rejuvenation. All components of individual health: spiritual, mental, and physical, depend on rest and relaxation. These days most healthcare organizations exist in a constant state of change. Change is seldom restful. I suspect organizations need rest and rejuvenation for their best health. The front line bears the brunt with interrupted work flow and changes in staffing and technology. Those touching our patients, clients, consumers feel less worn when they can depend on a steady routine of care and service. One of the hardest jobs of leadership is to care for the front line so they don’t burn out. We can set realistic timelines, support flexibility in hours to promote work/life balance, and make sure that changes at least make some of the work easier. We can promote positive storytelling that links staff back to the mission – why they do the work they do. What a dilemma: ever shifting environmental challenges necessitates the constant change that exhausts staff.

How does your organization rest and rejuvenate?

Jul 25 2012
Love0

Exercise – the instant magic lever

By Clinician, ePatient
Seems like a no brainer. Exercise, the instant magic lever for best health. Profoundly affects spiritual, mental, and physical health. One of the ways I discovered that I had multiple sclerosis was my inability to stay on a bicycle. I kept falling off when I stopped. Receiving the diagnosis was sobering at best! Sometimes very sad and depressing. Six months after my diagnosis I bought a Recumbent tricycle. I cried with relief that I could still get my favorite exercise. Can’t fall off a trike. Good for my soul, good for my heart, good for my quads. The direct connection between activity and recovery is so well documented.

How have we redesigned healthcare to include more activity? In that last 20 years patients walk right away after surgery and recover much more quickly. When I was an ICU manager we incorporated more activity into our standard operating procedure. We needed to use the families and caregivers to increase activity. We struggled with reluctant patients. But more activity for patients led to fewer complications, shorter stays, and better outcomes. Good for staff as well.  Have we taken this far enough? Do we build our organizational systems to maximize activity for staff?  I wonder if the magic levers of best health are obvious but fundamentally challenging-like the golden rule. Obvious and tough. 


What have you done to include physical activity in the routine of care giving?
Jul 24 2012
Love0

Best Health: Different lens, Different point of view

By Uncategorized

 

This first blog begins to set the stage. “Best health”. How will we recognize best health? For individuals, could it be love, peace of mind, a cure, ability to complete activities of daily living, or freedom from dis-ease? For organizations, could it be making a profit, growing volume, high overall satisfaction or NetPromoter score? 

Just like anything with the human condition, best health isn’t static. Best health has constant variation. At one point in my life working for a landscaping company, I had the task of completing the final hand raking of top soil for a brand new 2 acre rolling lawn. Took 20 hours. With the lens of that solitary monotonous gig I learned that there is no up without a down. Every depression had a corresponding rise. Zen for the 20 year old! Best implies less than best, always together.

While in nursing school, as a rehab aide, I was going down the hall with a 18 year old quadriplegic from a gunshot wound to the neck learning to maneuver his wheelchair with his mouth. Coming the other way was a 50 year old man suffering from a debilitating stroke, learning to locomote his wheelchair with his left hand and foot. Behind the drooling, slouching, struggling man was his beautiful 20 something wife dressed to the hilt looking completely disgusted. Out of the corner of his mouth my young patient muttered, “glad I’m not him.” It’s all relative. 

Different lens, different point of view. Attaining best health means figuring out the unique goal of the person or organization and working toward that goal collaboratively.

I invite you tell your story.
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