‘He took me for his housemaid,’ she said to herself as she ran. ‘How surprised he’ll be when he finds out who I am! But I’d better take him his fan and gloves—that is, if I can find them.’ As she said this, she came upon a neat little house, on the door of which was a bright brass plate with the name ‘W. RABBIT’ engraved upon it. She went in without knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the real Mary Ann, and be turned out of the house before she had found the fan and gloves.
(more…)Blog
-
The Art of Restart: How to recover from a devastating loss this pandemic
This COVID-19 pandemic brought misery, loss to many. Some lost work, their source of income while others lost a loved one. Both are devastating and causes grief. While grief is a normal response to a lost, grieving is specially difficult this pandemic. When a love one dies for example, the isolation and social distancing prevents us from mourning with others. Mourning with others facilitates the process of grieving. Going through the usual routine process of grieving is difficult or disrupted and recovery from grief is made even more difficult and or prolonged.
My grief stealthily started as a mountain of unfinished work and bad decisions. The constant fear of contracting COVID hovers as we battle on the frontlines. Stress and burnout mounted, albeit I was pretty sure I still can thrive. Then someone left and my mom died after a prolonged battle with diabetes. Grief slip into depression. I didn’t have any idea how I to unstuck myself from prolonged grief. Luckily, some people reached out and I am so grateful I survived and is now healing. Or at least I think I am.
This is the topic of our #HealthXPh tweet chat this Saturday December 11, 2021 9PM Manila time.
T1. What are the telltale signs of grief, burnout or depression during COVID-19 pandemic?
On hindsight, the first step to recovery from grief and later, depression, is accepting the fact that you are grieving. I have several grieving episodes in my life before, but grief during pandemics was especially difficult. The presentation was different and was even “facilitated” by isolation and social distancing. Social communication of grief is also quite awkward and is more difficult than face to face communication. This I observed in not a few close friends colleagues who are grieving too. Thus being “aware” that you are grieving this pandemic is a bit difficult or different.
T2. How would you navigate grief during this pandemic?
After accepting I was grieving, I started to reach out for help. I talked to friends, mentors, family and people that I trust and care for. Social media communication was very helpful. An escape from a toxic environment also helped me clear out confusion.
T3. What recovery tips can you offer to grieving persons?
Accept it and ask for help. A differing, positive perspective or revelations really helped a lot for me. Self love is ok, but giving care is even more healing. It also helps to express grief to others who are undergoing through the same process of healing. I also started to go back to activities I loved and enjoyed before.
After going through the process of grieving and healing, I realized grieving in this pandemic is almost always a constant. What makes it bearable is that it probably is be a a new normal grieving process for a longer time than expected. Then accepting it as it happens and how we cope with it might be really different from what we knew before.
Image by Freepik
-
Dousing “The Burn” out of Health Workers
Last year, I was literally up and about helping patients and love ones cope up with burnout amidst this pandemic. This year, I got burned and I had hard time dealing with it.
Growing up out of poverty and trained as an orthopedic surgeon, I am very confident of my “grit” and “resilience”. I could streetsmart myself out of any crisis or navigate a disaster, unscathed. I am usually called in to lead a team in crisis particularly because of “grit and resilience”. Moreover, Filipinos are known for our grit and resilience having been battered by disasters year in, year out. We usually just joke around these hardships like a regular daily occurrences. No wonder why burn out is overrated among us.
Well, not until this COVID-19 pandemic.
T1. How should I know I’m burned out?
Various studies have shown that 50-70% of health workers experienced burnout during this COVID-19 pandemic. I was expecting health worker burnout to happen anytime soon, but not me. It’s always easy diagnosing a disease when its afflicting someone else. But not me. I went about the business of leading a healthcare team fighting COVID-19 and spearheaded another organization’s learning and digital transformation. I even managed to set up a counselling program for burnout health workers in one institution. Yet, in the months that follow, I noticed the veil of burn out creeping in. Despite the perceived success of many endeavors I led, I felt achieving nothing. I can empathize with the emotional exhaustion of my colleagues, yet I “constructively” deny my own exhaustion. I worked and spend some more time on work. “Maybe this could solve more problems”. Personal tragedies filled up, fuses shortened and the volcanic, emotional outburst showed “the cracks”.
I am burned. I haven’t accepted it just yet, but I am definitely burned.
T2. What are the consequences of a health worker burn out?
What compelled me to accept this is ironically, the grim consequence it could bring not just to myself, but to the entire health care institution. It can and will probably cost lives- Mine or others. I’ve seen colleagues resigning or shifting to other less risky careers. I’ve talked to some who swear not to hold the stethoscope ever again. I’ve seen wards and hospitals shut down because of health worker shortages. I’ve seen patients got worse simply because there’s too much a single health worker could handle. The moral distress is high, particularly with the loss of sense of control over this pandemic. Even that, I still couldn’t believe that the resilient me can be burned.
T3. How can a health worker help him/herself and others, out of burnout?
Denial state notwithstanding, I have this moral obligation to do something about my burnout. Perhaps, one way to convince myself that I need help , is to help other health workers both on a personal and systems level. I called out a time out for my team. Not long enough, but not a bad start either. Health workers cannot simply “quit” en masse in a complex health systems. Second, we need to initiate system level safety nets that protect health workers from hazards and toxic work environment. Third and probably the most important, I have to deal with my own “burnt out” issues.
This will be the topic of our #healthxph tweet chat this saturday Oct 16, 2021 9PM Manila time. Please join us with this guide questions:
- T1. How should I know that I am burned out?
- T2. What are the consequences of a health worker burnout?
- T3. How can a health worker help him/herself and others, out of burnout?
Image by Sam Williams from Pixabay
-
Digital Online Language: Effectively conveying what we feel, online.
This pandemic changed the way human beings communicate or engage. Rules for communication changed almost overnight for most of us, some negatively. Others took it upon themselves to learn new ways of communicating online just so we continue building emotional trust while surviving this pandemic.
Social distancing reduced face to face communication to minimum, it reminded me of the caveman’s grunts and yells in the prehistoric times. Worst, “body language” to augment social communication we learned over time, is now very difficult to employ. You cannot simply hug a grieving person, or pat a colleague for a job well done. The water cooler or coffee break conversations are gone. So is the locker room tete a tete . This created a communication vacuum which fueled the sudden rise of digital communications recently.
True, digital communication somewhat reduced the void for human to human interactions. Connecting to people we love for example, is easier nowadays. But at the height of an emotional conversation, it is still very difficult to hug a video camera. Facial expressions and body language conveying emotional trust are less noticeable during digital communication. Yes there are emojis but using the right emojis is a challenge for most of us.
There are also that confusing human responses in digital space that cannot be easily corrected or undone compared to say, a face to face conversation. Regrettable tweets or status updates for example will stay in the internet forever no matter how often you offer apologies to the bereaved individuals.
Digital communication is even more important than ever with this pandemic. Effectively conveying what we feel online is even more important now that many of us are burnt by the prolonged physical distancing. This is the topic of our tweetchat:
- T1. How is the pandemic affecting your ability to convey messages across a physical or digital space?
- T2. Did you seek help on effective communication across digital space?
- T3. What specific recommendations can you give on effective communication across digital space?
Join us at 9PM Manila time on twitter at #HealthXPh and #HealthXspaces for our twitter spaces live discussion.
( Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay )
-
How Do We Measure Learning in the New Normal?
There’s no denying learning changed a lot this COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of this pandemic has gone deep and wide into our everyday life. We never had “enough” time to contemplate a learning strategy and measurement for our personal, career and academic life. As one doctor academician said:
“the struggle is real and frustrations borders depression! As if, I’m learning backwards!”
Learning and learning measurement awareness were already limited to “formal” schools even pre pandemic. We rarely stopped for a moment and asked ourselves ” Am I learning from this experience?”, as if learning is something subconscious and automatic for us. We never bothered to check if we are indeed learning. It was never a habit or behavior in the first place!
Pandemic changed all that and now there is an ongoing debate as to the best learning methods and measurement during pandemic. I asked these same questions at the start of this pandemic and got good responses from #HealthXPh chat. Understandably, we were in darkness that time, experimenting this or that in the hope we stumble at something concrete and effective while fighting COVID at the same time. One year into this pandemic, we have learned much about COVID-19 and have tried several learning strategies but have yet to get a clearer picture of ending this pandemic or the learning strategy that should works best for this new normal. Many hoped for a return to pre pandemic learning status quo simply because that’s what we’re good at. That is yet to be seen though. This is the topic of our upcoming tweetchat and twitter Spaces discussions this saturday May 15, 2021 at 9PM Manila time.
T1. What personal learning methods have you used since the start of this pandemic?
Self directed learning. While many of my pandemic education still relies heavily on the cadence of the formal academic institutions, most of my learning strategy now is really self directed. Many of the learning objectives I set during this pandemic stem from external inputs of formal academe, a lot of teaching learning activities I do are a hodgepodge of strategies from everywhere-personal, friends, parent, best friends, social media, books etc. Lately for example, I embarked on trying to learn how to weld metals and construct a simple flower base stand. Before you have to go to technical school for this so you dont get electrocuted. Now, after watching a youtube video or two, I went directly trying it out. without a mentor or a teacher. Social media also a played a big chunk of my education feed and source. Not because all that it produce are valid or accurate, but i have learned the hard way of discriminating which ones are fakes or validated accurate. Vaccine information for example couldn’t have reached me fast if not for social media.
T2. How do you determine the best strategy that worked best for you?
In academe we talk about models for measuring if the learner “learned’ something. Bloom’s taxonomy and Kirkpatrick Models are the more familiar ones. Personally I like the Kirkpatrick model for personal learning. The endpoint I’m usually looking for is the formation of new behaviors (3rd level) or best if i get actual results from these learning (4th level). A very common example here is handwashing and mask wearing. The simple learning objective here is to make handwashing and mask wearing a habit and the 4th level results should be prevention of COVID transmission.
T3. What proved to be least/ most effective learning strategy?
I am not saying I do not learn from webinars or online presentations, because I do. The learning I get in this mode is tiny in comparison to the volume of information bombarded to me in all online presentations. I still learned dancing from actually dancing than just watching someone dance on youtube. In other words, learn best applying, incorporating or having a “hands on” experience. In my case a surgeon, I learn more about new ways of mending bones by actually cutting and practicing on sawbones given the limited exposure to cases we have during this pandemic. On a personal level thus, I could learn better if vaccines works by actually taking one and not just listening or debating lengthily on social media if it works.
Learning is always personal to me, be it in academe, career or personal life. The context and environment may change but the overall governing principles are the same. We continue to learn because we wanted to adapt, to exist, to survive and above all make an impact whatever the context we have.
Join #HealthXPh and tweet Spaces discussion this May 15, 2021 at 9PM Manila time as we discuss how we learn in the new normal. These are our guide questions.
- T1. What personal learning methods have you used since the start of this pandemic?
- T2. How do you determine the best strategy that worked best for you?
- T3. What proved to be least/ most effective learning strategy?