Thank you, everyone, for coming to our quick 10-minute talk today on wellness for leaders and how to rejuvenate your colleagues in these trying times. My name is Lillian Liang-Emlett, and I am an adult intensivist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our objectives for today are to identify three steps that healthcare leaders can take to lead their teams towards resilience and wellness. And our roadmap for today is to discuss why your wellness matters, especially as a healthcare leader. Three steps to anchor yourself and to go through some coaching questions for yourself to gain clarity on what you need to do to rejuvenate your team. So it goes without saying that the COVID pandemic has highlighted the issues in healthcare that we are stressed to the max, having staffing issues, and many in healthcare are leaving. We are not immune as healthcare providers from the stressors that the whole world has faced for the last two years. We too need to ensure that our families are safe, that clinical care remains compassionate, and that education, quality, and research remains excellent. We struggle as leaders to juggle all that is necessary to keep teams thriving. We know that our interprofessional teams need to be heard, listened to, and protected with adequate PPE, prepared with adequate resources, and supported and cared for so that they can show up to care for others. Leadership of the healthcare team is a team sport, and everyone can make a difference. And while this talk might be overtly labeled for leaders of the team, I ask everyone listening to think about how we lead our peers, other disciplines, and how we show up for each other matters. Everyone on the team leads. So I ask you to pause and reflect. What energy do you bring to your team at work? How are you? And as Abraham Lincoln once stated, the best way to predict the future is to create it. Let's spend some time co-creating space for you to lead your team. You will need for this session is a piece of paper, a journal, a notebook, a pen or a pencil, quiet space, an open mind, and honesty with yourself. And so the three steps to lead when times are hard are one, finding your own release valve. The only way through emotions is through them. You must have space to feel your emotions as challenging as that might be. Two, fill your cup so that you can fill others. We need to practice what we preach, but the oxygen mask on ourselves first before caring for others. We must anchor ourselves first. And lastly, three, can we shine a light on the way out? You're excellent problem solvers. And so the question I pose to you is, can you see the light amidst the darkness and can you show others too? So I'd like you to get out your paper or journal and take the time to answer these coaching questions designed to help you process and reflect on how this pandemic has affected you and your teams. And so the first question is, what feels different about this time? What feelings come up for you? You're welcome to pause the video now so that you have some time to write and reflect and write down what feelings come up for you about what stressors you have at work. When asked to do this exercise, some have struggles in naming their emotions. For those of you who are curious on how well it is to describe the emotions, I suggest you Google something called the emotion wheel, which there are very many different versions of out there. And you can see that there are many different ways to express it with greater specificity, the emotions that you can be feeling. And it's important to identify and name accurately what emotions you feel so that you can process them and so that you can recognize them in your team so that you can address them. Because naming them is the first step to being heard. This next exercise, I would like you to do on a piece of scrap paper, a post-it note, something loose leaf, something small. And I do this exercise with my teams before we start rounds with our interprofessional rounds. Just write down something that's already irritating to you or made you angry at work today, something that's frustrating before even going on to rounds. And no one is asked to share this. So go ahead and write down something that's really annoying. And then you're going to fold up that piece of paper, tear it up into a bunch of tiny pieces and throw it away in order to release those emotions and to release the frustration and also get it out. We do this primarily, I explained, because we only have a few hours to be fully present for our families, our patients, and each other. And holding that baggage doesn't help. And it's very useful to sort of release it. Many of my colleagues have told me how surprised they were that just doing that process helped release the emotions so they could actually focus on the day at hand and rounds became more efficient. And so reminding ourselves in terms of where we are with why these three steps are key, knowing your own emotions is important so they can be released. And people use different ways to get there, whether it be writing, journaling, dancing, poetry, friends, counseling, and then to find your own anchor, to figure out what fills your own cup so that you can actually do the best self-care for yourself. Sleep is critically important. For many, meditation or prayer is deeply important, and connecting with each other. Believe it or not, connecting with each other within our critical care community is highly important in finding that self-care. The last but not least is still finding the good things despite the darkness. Even amidst the challenging times we've had for the last two years, there are many things to be grateful for. And the question is, can you thank someone on your team? Can you be grateful for them, and can you see the good things that are happening even when things are tough? Our next question asks you to reflect on what grounds you and keeps you calm. For some people, this is a challenge. They're not sure. They're not sure to where to begin. So take this time to think about what fills your cup, what grounds you and keeps you calm. Again, feel free to pause the video at this point so that you can have some time to write. This next slide is to remind you of the power that you have within yourself at any given moment, even in between running to emergencies. You have the power of your own breath, where you can center yourself in three quick breaths by taking a deep breath in and then letting it out. Taking a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. And there are many apps to help you with this. Sometimes people like a visual, and there are different apps to provide a visual in order to help you center different types of breath with different hold lengths to be able to center yourself. And this is easy to do in between meetings, for one minute in the bathroom, that you can actually help center yourself before the next problem you have to solve. And then last but not least, I want to end with the fact that we actually do work and learn together, and that the mirror neurons in your brain is actually how we are all learning together, including how children learn from each other. And so because this is true that we all will emulate the energy that you see, I ask you as a leader, how else might you respond and react in the moment? It's a choice that you make to ground yourself and respond with grace. Take a moment to pause the video and think about how you are showing up and how you might choose to react and respond differently. And then I'd just like to conclude the last coaching question to be pointing out what else is going well. Write down three things that are going well with your work team and your work family. What else is going well? And so in conclusion, we really are in this together. However, we do need to acknowledge and validate our emotions in ourselves so that we can for each other, that we have the power to breathe and center ourselves for the next emergency that comes. And there are still possibilities to see gratitude and goodness in what's happening even now in the darkness. And to remember to praise and lift that up as a beacon of hope for your team. And so when you lead, you lead with your frontline staff routinely with leadership rounds in this space with gratitude and centered and ability to make those calm, excellent decisions. For more resources, I point you towards the National Academies of Medicine, where they have a great amount of resources, even pre-pandemic, to support the health and well-being of clinicians. And also some other key articles that support the use of peer support groups, psychological first aid, and other strategies to help promote team wellness. All of these resources and more can be found if you scan the QR code here for the references. I've listed those out. I'm also happy to chat at any point. If you want to decompress, debrief, and also brainstorm ideas, that can be found on Twitter. I want to acknowledge the fact that throughout the pandemic, the physician support line has provided free confidential peer support from volunteer psychiatrists for the last two years. And so save this phone number in your phone, you never know when you're going to need it. Thank you so much for listening.

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Behavioral Health and Burnout