Today's workplaces are responding to never before seen challenges and scenarios, all while adjusting to a virtual work-from-home environment. It's clear that solving these new challenges will require individuals and teams to think differently than they have in the past, which begs the question..How can leaders and teams establish a culture of virtual innovation?
Helping Medical Professionals During COVID-19
The level of risk in patient care today is higher than most providers ever considered when choosing medicine as a profession. The war metaphors being used in the Covid-19 fight aptly fit the threat doctors are experiencing. To emotionally bolster staff and lessen residual trauma, medical leaders and front line providers can benefit from applying well refined military crisis leadership strategies.
Routine to remarkable----overnight. That’s what has happened to frontline medical triage with the rapid, unprecedented and unrelenting onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. EMT, ER and ICU staff are well-trained to handle emergency crises of all types, just not of this magnitude, intensity and duration. Medical team leaders face life threatening issues on a regular basis, but not to their own lives at the very same time. Their training and experience prepare them to rapidly assess, execute and adjust medical protocols to fit the needs of a medical crisis, and then usually the crisis ends. Reports from the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic have medical professionals describing themselves as “soldiers in the fog of war” physically exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed.
A Letter to Frontline Responders
Holly Hughson is an OD consultant and change strategist, who has spent almost two decades working in high-stakes crisis response, humanitarian action and civil-military coordination. Holly's current work focuses on the human cost incurred by practitioners working on the frontlines of human suffering and vulnerability, and she serves as project advisor for “Ethics Education for Crisis Medicine” at the Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College London. In a moving tribute she shares her insights and admiration with the frontline responders of COVID-19.
Taking the time for Mindfulness
With the abundance of uncertainties facing us in present day, it can be challenging to remain focused on one task at a time. Our minds are riddled with thoughts of responsibilities to take care of, meetings to attend, changes and adaptations that need to be made, and the like. When so many thoughts and concerns are circling around our mind all at once, it can feel like we are going through the motions on autopilot without truly experiencing life as it is right now in the present. Taking the time to focus and to mindfully live your best life in both your work and personal life is a critical component of long term satisfaction.
Since there was very little time between “rehearsal” and going live with remote working and virtual meetings, now is a good time for a mid-course pause. Take a moment for some self-reflection:
Restorative practices for frontline medical providers, hospital leaders, and laboratory scientists to bolster themselves during the COVID-19 outbreak
What do each of the three remaining candidates propose for the American health care delivery system?
