I'll give you a little bio, a little information about myself. So I'm Mojda Hevner, and I'm an associate professor in critical care at University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. My clinical role is a MICU pharmacist as my practice site, and I'm also the vice chair for clinical services at the School of Pharmacy and serve in a residency coordinator capacity as well. So you're probably wondering, what is she doing speaking on this topic? And I was very excited to be asked to speak as part of this group because I get to meet these lovely ladies in real life. But they've talked a lot about the research they've done and really their expertise in all of these areas related to wellness and social media, resiliency, mindfulness. I know I've personally learned a lot from them. So in understanding why I was asked to do this, because honestly, when I heard that my contribution would be work-life balance, I actually laughed because I didn't necessarily think that I was the embodiment of what that means. I realized that my superpower is being very vulnerable and transparent. And so this was envisioned when this proposal was initially put in by Asha and Pooja, who couldn't be here with us today. It was really envisioned to be a workshop, so sort of working with you guys and having interaction and talking through some of the strategies that we have for wellness overall and actually learning from each other. And so for the remainder of this session, we'll be having kind of a panel discussion slash Q&A. So I have about three slides that I'll go over and tell you a little bit more about my personal perspective, which may not be your perspective, and that's OK. But just to, again, be a little vulnerable, put myself out there as an example and share with you what I think wellness is and how I approach my work-life integration. And then open it up for some questions and continue the conversation with the panel. So really the first question, for anyone who knows me, you know I'm all about the semantics. And so what does this term mean? How do you define this term? And so I know it's kind of a silly thing to say, but what is work? What is life? And how are those separate or similar? And how do you integrate those components? So one of the smartest men, if not the smartest man in my life, is my dad. No offense to my husband. But as part of his father of the bride speech at my wedding, he said, when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. And first of all, I thought it was really interesting that he chose to speak about work at my wedding, my work at my wedding. But I think it really speaks to sort of how I've approached my career, which is it is actually my passion, and it is my purpose, part of my purpose in life. And so I think I've tried to approach my work-life integration in this manner, in that my work is personally fulfilling, and I don't have great separation of my work and life kind of personas or worlds, as you will see in this slide. So you know, the question comes up, how do you develop a symbiotic relationship between your work and your life? And I think it really needs to be symbiotic if those worlds are integrated. And for me, they're highly integrated. I don't have a separation. I do have the balance, which we can talk about a little bit more in the panel discussion, and I want to hear from you guys as well on your perspectives. But my children very much know what I do. They know what my husband does. We talk about sepsis at the dinner table. We have discussions about how to have critical conversations with people, or you know, difficult conversations, conflict resolution. Both my husband and I are in administrative roles, so we talk about a lot of that stuff at home. And for us, that has been part of our work-life integration, and I think part of the reason why I think, you know, we've been successful in raising relatively good humans so far, at least, and also having pretty successful careers despite them, you know, despite our careers being pretty demanding. So this is a picture of my daughter, Ariana. She's my older daughter, and she, it was a snow day, and as you can see, it is not snowing outside. I'm sure many of the parents in the room can relate to that. But it was, you know, anticipated that it would snow, and so the schools closed down, and my husband, who's a pulmonary critical care doctor, had a very busy shift in the ICU, and we weren't quite ready for that level of work-life integration, for him to take her to work with him. I happened to be off service that day. I was teaching for about three hours that day, so I offered to take her to work with me, and I have to tell you, it was the best day of her life. She set up a mailbox outside my door, covered up, like, my name on the wall, and actually put a mailbox up there that had her name and her sister's name, and so it was Dr. Ariana and Dr. Cora, and people were dropping off mail for them all day long. And so that was my way of integrating those worlds, you know, I managed to spend a little bit of time with my daughter, but I also managed to teach my class. Not saying that that's easy, but that is, you know, the strategy that I personally have taken into my work-life integration, and making my children very much aware of the work that I do, and actually really a part of it. So I think the challenge that comes with that deep integration of those worlds is the, I guess, inability sometimes to sort of limit how those worlds collide at times, and, you know, the feeling that sometimes certain elements are maybe off balance. And so I'm going to use this as an opportunity to maybe open it up to really all of you guys to hear your stories of maybe how you've dealt with this, and then we can go into further questions. I'll start it off with an example of what I've done when I felt like that balance of that integration just wasn't right. And I do want to preface this, too, by saying that it doesn't always have to be a static balance, if that makes sense. So what I feel is being the balance for me right now may not be the balance for me, you know, next week. Obviously, I'm at this conference right now, my children are not here, my husband's not here, and so I am prioritizing my work, and that is the balance that I actually feel comfortable with right now in this moment. When I go home, you know, it's going to be a little bit different. And so an example for me where I felt like my personal life was actually maybe getting in the way of my ability to perform at my highest level in my work life was actually, not surprisingly, during the pandemic. So I think it was maybe April 2020, and, you know, all the schools had closed down and I happened to be off service. And so I was like, OK, the only thing, the only thing, which, you know, it wasn't the only thing that I have going on right now is I'm teaching this course and it's virtual. I can teach it from home. I can have the kids home with me. It'll be fine. And of course, I was teaching a three hour case discussion with 130 students virtually that was supposed to be an interactive discussion on a topic that wasn't my area of expertise. I was cross covering for one of our ID pharmacy faculty on her topic, because as you can imagine, April 2020, she was a little bit busy. And so I had this whole plan of my kids were at the time two and seven. And so I was like, it'll be perfect. I will do the teaching during my two year old's nap. And if she wakes up, you know, worst case, if she wakes up, my seven year old was instructed to turn on the TV and pull her sister in and like just like entertain her until I was done. As you can imagine, I'm telling this story because that didn't happen the way that I had hoped. And so before I knew it, maybe 10 minutes into class, my two year old had woken up from her nap and decided that she was going to sit on my lap during class. And then soon enough, she had all of her clothes off. She was sitting in her diaper. She had taken my pen away from me that I was actually like taking notes on and grading the students and was writing all over my hand, a little bit on my face. I mean, it was it was hard. There's like no way to explain that other than that was emotionally so challenging for me because I'm trying to do a good job, you know, teach these students, engage these students. And meanwhile, my daughter, who I love very much, is kind of sabotaging it. And so for me, that was that was imbalanced, like my worlds were very integrated, which is my normal, but it didn't feel right in that moment. The funny thing is, you know, that was a horrible experience for me, but that was probably the best course evaluation that I've ever had. So, you know, perspective, it's certainly interesting. Right. But after about three hours of crying on the floor after that experience, I pulled myself together and I had a conversation with my husband. I had a conversation with my chair and I was very transparent with her that this is really hard for me. And I actually, you know, I thought I could do this. I don't I actually don't think I can. And so she was and this is, I think, a message to all of the leaders in the room or anybody who's listening really is that she was very supportive of me and identifying a tangible solution to my issue. And that that tangible solution to my issue was child care. And so we were able to find an opportunity for child care through a contract that the hospital had with actually one of the one of the chains. And I was able to get child care, fortunately, in time that I had to go on on clinical service. But that's an example of where my personal life really felt like it was taking over my professional life. And obviously, we have many, many instances where we feel the other way around. And I think I could think of some strategies of that. But I'd like to open it up to you guys to maybe give an example of a time where you felt like your worlds were sort of encroaching into one another and no longer being really productive or symbiotic.

Dr. Mojda Hevner

associate professor

critical care

work-life integration

challenges