Healing Healthcare Job Stress

Healthcare job stress ravages all medical care settings during pandemics. But you CAN sleep better, work better, and survive pandemic job stress. Rest.Work.Survive is a free online program offering healthcare employees effective, easy-to-learn and quick to use strategies for stress and sleeplessness.

Pandemic Stress

Rest.Work.Survive started as a way to help healthcare employees deployed to work caring for patients with Covid 19, including first responders, acute care, long term care, and home care. Members of all departments speak of how vigilant they need to be to work safely, and how difficult it is to turn the vigilance off to get some sleep after a long shift. Vigilance is a type of good stress that saves lives, but when work is over contributes to insomnia.

Front line workers also describe the pandemic job stress they then cope with, after a short night’s sleep.  These heroes carry to work concerns about insufficient PPE, about their patients, and about continually trying to excel while learning new ways to do their work. Front line workers also carry to work their family’s fear for their well-being, as well as the anxieties created by sensational news reports. Healthcare employee stress includes anger toward decisions and behaviors that put everyone at risk.

Pandemic stress in ancillary medical settings

Then I began to hear from employees in ancillary medical settings, like obstetrics, oncology, pediatrics, and primary care. Their healthcare job stress includes a fear of being reassigned to critical care settings for which they are not trained, and the struggle to find, learn, and adapt to new ways of keeping patients and themselves safe from Covid-19. Tasks take longer, workdays are extended. The mind has a wide variety of legitimate anxieties on which to focus as the work environment and safety mandates change frequently.

And then, ‘non-essential’ medical settings closed.  Stressed healthcare workers are shocked to find themselves furloughed, ‘reduced,’ or laid off during the greatest health crisis of our lives. The unexpected financial strain and need to file for unemployment created another kind of sleeplessness for healthcare employees. Patient well-being is often in the thoughts of compassionate caregivers who worry about the patient care that was considered so essential until now.

And now, in some areas, ‘nonessential’ medical services are reopening. Sleeplessness is on the rise again as furloughed stressed healthcare employees are expected to return to work they no longer recognize with patients who are feeling neglected, betrayed, afraid, and showing their anger.

Why are healthcare retirees stressed?

I also hear from long-retired healthcare employees many of whom are quite elderly. Their distress results from a sense of powerlessness along with deep empathy for their younger colleagues on the many front lines of a pandemic. Their sleeplessness arises from a wise awareness of the impact of working with inadequate resources in high pressure environments to healthcare employee’s mental health, well-being, and relationships.

Healing Stressed healthcare workers – like yourself!

Rest.Work.Survive has served stressed healthcare employees throughout all of these pandemic phases. This free* online course is my offering to reduce healthcare job stress. I am a nurse, I am unable to work in patient care settings, but I am not powerless.  But I can help stressed healthcare workers sleep better and gather up their strength to return to work with compassion and self-assurance. I have been doing so for a long time, and now it’s needed more than ever.

The biggest obstacles to trying something new are time, money, and trust. This program is free, takes less than 30 minutes, and I am an expert in teaching well-being. Rest.WORK.Survive is a comprehensive program offering effective, easy-to-learn and quick to use strategies to rest well and work well. It is organized for your convenience to access online from your laptop, mobile phone, or tablet. Profound and yet concise, each webinar averages 6 minutes in length.

If sleeping better and gathering up your strength to return to work resonates with you, and I suspect it does, here’s what you can do:

Help me help a lot of healthcare employees!

1. Enroll in Rest.Work.Survive today.  It’s free*, the webinars take less than 30 minutes of your time, and the outcomes are priceless. www.LymanCenter.com/courses
2. Send the enrollment link to your friends, family, and colleagues in healthcare by text or email www.lymancenter.com/courses
3. Post a notice about Rest.Work.Survive in your employer’s newsletter, your professional organization’s social media, your alumni newsletter, your social media page, or for your unit.  

Here’s some text you can cut and paste:

• Rest.Work.Survive
• Sleep better, work better, survive this pandemic
• An online program to help rest after your shift or gear up for your coming shift
• Offered by Gale Lyman, RN, BSN, HNB-BC
• Free for all healthcare employees!
• Learn effective tools in short multimedia programs (average length 6 mins)
• Available at your convenience
• Enroll for free at www.LymanCenter.com/courses

Rest.Work.Survive CAN help you get through this world-wide crisis. You CAN sleep better, work better, and survive this pandemic.

May you be well, may all healthcare employees be well, may all beings be well.

In peace,

Gale

*Free for now (July 2020) and probably for many  months but legally I have to say that it is a limited time offer. Visit www.LymanCenter.com/courses for details.

Photo Credits: Pixabay images free for commercial use