Organizational leaders and nurse educators are concerned with the adequate training of nursing students. Being able to adequately support their skill development and clinical practice is key. The support to new nurses is also key to adhering to nursing standards and maintaining patient safety. A shortage of nurse preceptors, along with a higher number of travel nurses, has impacted the nursing profession, thus requiring a solid strategy to strengthen the nursing pipeline.
The shift in the trends across the profession of nursing suggest a rapid movement and strategy in the area of retention. The sky is clear and the beautiful river flows freely and gives life to a new nursing landscape. But this new landscape is rife with struggle from a previous nursing shortage.
Today, post-COVID, requires us to place a high level of energy and dedication to supporting health and wellness practices of nurses – to retain them. But expect some hiccups along the way since most health and wellness programs, particularly those that fall under EAP, lack employee engagement. These are the same programs that bleed health care budgets, and they also lack progress and enthusiasm. Of course, we’re sure to expect a period of resistance; more so with health executives who are likely getting pitched constantly with low-quality, budget-bleeding programs. After all, their primary interest is keeping the budgets balanced in a health care system that seems to be imploding the budgets on a good day.
It’s been suggested that approximately 80% of employees who work at companies with robust health and wellness programs feel engaged and cared for by their employers. That’s because job satisfaction means the world to employees. When it comes to personal development and wellness in the workplace, according to Nursing Central, nurses find this particularly appealing. Might this leads us into a new era of strengthening our nursing retention strategy?
The key is, we have to move forward to reach healthcare’s goals: retain as many qualified nurses as possible so the hospital achieves its mission. Let’s pause for a moment.
Can we do better?
To make the most of the current pipeline, particularly with new hires and new grads, it’s imperative to meet them where they’re at. It’s all too common to pull-back budgets and cut areas that are most important to our retention strategies. In an era where the demands of their work increasingly burden healthcare professionals, the need for innovative solutions to support their well-being has never been more critic.
Healthcare systems worldwide are grappling with a growing crisis: the retention of skilled health practitioners. Burnout, stress, and a lack of adequate support drive many professionals to leave the field, exacerbating a critical shortage of healthcare workers. The impact of this crisis extends beyond the individuals directly affected; it jeopardizes the quality of care patients receive and strains the entire healthcare infrastructure.The goal of The ProMind Experience is to engage practitioners on a regular basis, so they take action consistently throughout our 7 weeks together, effecting positive behaviour change over time. These are the Mindful Clinicians who will produce results for you. They will stick with you in the long-run because they feel valued and appreciated.
Personal Development & The ProMind Experience’s 5-Step System For Peak Performance
The peak performance of our health practitioners is not just a professional concern—it is a societal one. When we fail to support those who care for us, we undermine the very foundation of our healthcare system. Our mission is to create better human outcomes for health practitioners. Once you determine that the health and personal development is key to your retention strategy, and focus on that singular goal, the opportunity to make a positive impact will follow, and the need is urgent. When you have a mentally-focused and healthy workforce, they have greater performance. The body and brain are working in a cohesive manner.
Process + Mindset Are Required
Many workplaces have health & wellness committees, created by the employees themselves, which is a great start. They all want to help, and have their hearts in the right place. However, all too often, these committees lack both the process and mindset to creating sustainable change across an entire organization. In fact, both process and mindset are typically missing across most employee wellness programs. This is because they focus on a few laser strategies, in fear of overwhelming staff. What results is a duct-tape approach to giving a ton of strategies without process or mindset and the health program doesn’t serve the whole person.
Why People Burnout
Burnout is a physiological condition that occurs when the body’s pushed to its limits. It simply secretes too much cortisol than the mind/body can handle.
Here are the 3 leading reasons for people burning-out (among many others):
- Too big of a workload.
- Their family and personal lives are challenged due to job – this is true for many!
- The employment doesn’t allow them enough time outside of work to recover.
Armed with such information, workplaces could reduce these risk factors to fosters healthy employees and further strengthen the nursing pipeline. Wellbeing programs are a workplace staple, offering a strategic way for employers to encourage healthy lifestyle choices and invest in their employees’ physical and mental wellbeing, preventing the cycle of burnout from occurring. Included in The ProMind Experience, is our 3-part training series The Banish Burnout Bootcamp to support staff at balancing the body and brain.
Strengthening Your Pipeline Through Health Promotion Programs At Work
The field of health promotion/disease prevention heavily relies on the science of behaviour change. The reason being, people don’t change that easily. Our daily behaviours are deeply entrenched in values, beliefs, and old subconscious programming. Healthy behaviour change in the workplace requires strategic workplace health redesign and a sustainable health strategy. Hospitals today require a shift in focus to support the entire wellbeing of their staff.
A Consciousness Shift To Strengthen Your Nursing Pipeline
I invite you to take an honest look at your own values regarding health, wellness, peak performance, and your mindset on staff retention. Extend that view to the culture of your management, and then the organization at large. Most importantly, adopt a holistic health and wellness perspective when it comes to workplace health promotion programs to avoid wasting funds or personal time.
By improving workplace health programs in hospitals, employees can rebound from the challenging physical responses leading them to burnout. When we launched ProMind, our vision was simple: Get health practitioners to think about their physical and mental health more proactively. Our goal in The ProMind Experience is to support hospitals in raising awareness of burnout, along with the benefits of workplace well-being and personal development.
The ProMind Experience broadened its focus to encompass physical, cognitive, spiritual, and behavioral health to help hospital employers understand and support the full range of wellbeing needs of their employees. While the term “Wellbeing” is expansive, engaging the frontline in an experiential program was the place to start. We believe the most important element of being well is the ability to self-regulate and balance your health across all areas of your life—and to become more aware of what makes you feel unwell or unbalanced. Awareness and mindfulness are just the beginning of The ProMind Experience. We then take health practitioners four steps beyond that, in our 5-Step System for Peak Performance.
Will You Be That Clinical Leader To Shift To Innovative Solutions?
When you partner with The ProMind Experience, you instantly create value for the hospital and its nursing teams. Founder & CEO, Lynn Chénier, has directly faced the challenges of burnout as a nurse on the frontline. She became so frustrated with frontline nursing that she was moving on to become a Doctor of Chiropractic. Alongside Chiropractic, Lynn pursued her nursing career part-time and then abruptly faced a life-altering motor vehicle crash on the highway. This catastrophic event forced her to pause her career for nearly a decade to recover from challenging orthopedic traumas. This didn’t stop her from pursuing her goals and dreams, however. Her peak performance attitude, and background as a nurse and chiropractic student, supported her recovery through this car crash.
Lynn not only speaks as a nurse but carries with her a 25+ year practice in Transcendental Meditation. She is also dedicated to teaching students to meditate, to recover from daily stress and allow the mind to reach expanded states. Her team of health professionals works alongside stakeholders and the frontline to support, engage, and motivate every step of the way.
Summary
Personal growth and development go hand-in-hand with strengthening the future nursing pipeline. There are many self-care activities that can promote health and wellbeing, but evidence suggests that staff don’t implement these strategies. Many short programs merely dose nurses with a ton of strategies but lack a system for implementation. The ProMind Experience provides both a process and a mindset—its 5-Step System for Peak Performance. Health professionals, in particular, need both to create the necessary shifts in maintaining health and balance in their lives. When nurses have a process for creating more balance in their lives, they have a more positive impact on patient care.
When health institutions implement a hospital-wide program like The ProMind Experience, healthcare staff experience a proactive approach, unlike any other program out there.
Reach out to schedule a Discovery Call to see if we’re the right fit for your organization: 250-884-722