Cast & Curious

Tag: tweetchat

  • Gratitude: The Art of Savoring.

    I was stressed this past past few weeks I finally figured in a sports injury which was supposed to be a way to de-stress my body. The many roles I acquired during the pandemic finally took its toll after almost all required physical presence and face to face activities.

    Face to face tasks demand full attention and physical presence. You cannot attend two conferences at the same time anymore or listen to two lectures on two different gadgets. It seems that, the technology enabled “always present, always available” does not hold true anymore post pandemic. It came to a frustrating point that I decided to give up one of the “roles” I took on during the pandemic. The reason? I couldn’t handle that many roles anymore, not in this post pandemic, physical presence demanding work environment. I just want to go back see and treat patients, nothing else.

    One mentor I consulted said “instead of lingering on the many difficulties this pandemic brought us, try savoring on the ones you survived- the small wins. You may have downplayed many of these wins because of the negative experience we had in this pandemic!” “You journal right? I’m sure there is a lot you can write on the gratitude corner”. He was absolutely right!

    Gratitude! I can certainly count many but why is it easier to linger on a negative experience? Medical professionals are often taught to spot uncomfortable experiences like pain, decrease range of motion or difficulty breathing. When was the last time you asked a patient “Did you have a good night sleep?” Somehow we relegated that gratitude to that small corner of our planner. We lost that art of savoring the small wins.

    “Savoring” said Daniela Ramirez Duran, is “intentionally placing our attention on positive events and prolonging the positive feelings that arise”. Duran further enumerated the many benefits of increasing savoring ability. I first encountered the word “savoring” in Christopher Peterson’s Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology. Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience by Fred B. Bryant and Joseph Veroff dug deeper into this “art” and gave practical tips applying it on our daily life. Dr. Hayley Lewis enumerated some of these tips in a sketch note below.

    I’m asking my fellow healthcare providers about the art of savoring in their daily life and how they practice gratitude in spite of the challenging grinds of the medical life. This will be the topic of our #HealthXPh chat this Saturday July 1, 2023 9PM Manila time. Here are the guide questions:

    [su_box title=”Art of Savoring among Healthcare Professionals”]
    [su_list icon=”icon: hand-o-right”]

    • T1. What are the benefits of savoring/ gratitude?
    • T2. How do you practice savoring/ gratitude?
    • T3. Do you recommend/ prescribe gratitude exercise? [/su_list] [/su_box]

      See you all this Saturday 9PM for the #HealthXPh Tweetchat!

      Image by partystock on Freepik

  • How Change is Ushered in Healthcare

    Pre pandemic, it is said that among service industries, change is predictably most difficult in the healthcare profession. There are several reason for this, but because processes in healthcare are already often complex, and sometimes ambiguous, embedding a new culture happen at a very slow pace. Take the pre pandemic research to standards of care policy change and implementation. It usually takes a decade for new promising research result to become standards of care in clinical medicine. This is even longer in the field of surgery.

    Interestingly, it took us a pandemic to change some of our long held beliefs and practices. Vaccine development and approval for public use for example, took a lightning speed compared to pre pandemic process development and implementation. The use of telemedicine as an adjunct to clinical care also took a “boost” during the pandemic. There’s a saying that necessity is the mother of all inventions, but I guess we cannot wait for another pandemic like scenario to usher change in healthcare. Thus, whatever ushered the lightning speed changes to the healthcare industry during this pandemic, is worth reflecting and replicating. This will be the topic of our tweet chat this Saturday Feb 25, 2023 9:00PM Manila time.

    [su_box title=”Ushering change in the healthcare industry”]
    [su_list icon=”icon: hand-o-right”]

    • T1. What ushered the rapid behaviour changes observed among healthcare professionals during the pandemic?
    • T2. What ushered the rapid process change observed in the healthcare industry during the pandemic?
    • T3. What leadership or management culture that ushered the rapid behavior and process change in the healthcare industry? [/su_list] [/su_box]

      To join the tweet chat, just introduce yourself, answer the above guide questions on prompt and append the hashtag #HealthXPh” to your tweets. See you!

      Image by wavebreakmedia_micro on Freepik

  • Doing Something Different in 2023.

    This topic was inspired by a chat topic at the healthcare leadership blog.

    January has been traditionally a new year resolutions month even for #Healthxph. In the last 2 pandemic new year, I only made one new year resolution and that is to survive the pandemic. Given my sorry batting average for achieving new year resolutions, this one has been so far the hardest and yet, here I am entering 2023, alive. I am grateful to a lot of people for that.

    This year, I want to do something different though. We’re slowly emerging into the new post pandemic normal and I realized some of my “pandemic” habits probably won’t be applicable in 2023. At work for example, I find “mixing” my multiple online activities with face to face tasks really tiring. Like 24 hours isn’t enough! So maybe there’s something I need to do differently this year. This will be the topic of the #Healthxph chat this Saturday Jan 14, 2023 9:00 PM Manila time.

    [su_box title=”Tweetchat: Doing Something Different in 2023 “]
    [su_list icon=”icon: hand-o-right”]

    • T1. What in your personal life, will you do differently in 2023?
    • T2. What in your career , will you do differently in 2023?
    • T3. What do you foresee will be your biggest challenge this 2023? [/su_list] [/su_box]

      Log in to your twitter account, follow the hashtag #Healthxph and contribute you thoughts to the guide questions above by appending #Healthxph in your tweets. See you all there!

      Image by Freepik

  • Building organizational culture with social media

    Since I started dabbling with social media, I believe there was more to it than politics, entertainment, branding, marketing or plain gossip mongering. We humans pushed the limits of our potential to progress (and sometimes disasters), by being social. We championed our kind as the “superior” animal because of our ability to socialize, collaborate and defend our race as one cohesive unit. History is replete with “tools” that help us build cultures. Fire, stone, religion, steel, money, weapons, print, radio, TV and now, the internet. We built our culture by being social- from the stone age, to possibly, the digital era.

    As I write this piece, the stark contrast of cultures before and at the dawn of social media platforms is mind boggling. Just how we build a culture via social media is something that needs clarifying but one thing for sure, we are at a point of no return. We move forward with social media from here.

    When we started #HealthXPh, we thought we can build a culture of collaboration among healthcare workers via social media. #HealthXPh does this because we believe in doing the “social” good. Thus, we helped build communities of health- aware organizations espousing the “social good”, via this platform. Proof to this is this tweet chat, that discusses almost everything under the sun that affects healthcare workers and patients. How #HealthXPh did that was sort of a trial and error exploration, in a platform that was very new and volatile even five or ten years ago. As an organizational development junkie, that Is what I am very much interested. Join #HealthXPh tweet chat this Saturday Sept 3, 2022 9PM Manila Time as we try to share insights on how to build organizational culture via social media. Tweet your answers back to the following guide questions and append the hashtag #HealthXPh in the tweet.

    [su_box title=”Building organizational culture via social media”]
    [su_list icon=”icon: hand-o-right”]

    • T1. Can you build organizational culture with social media? Why or why not?
    • T2. What are the risks and challenges of building organizational culture with social media?
    • T3. How can you successfully build organizational culture with social media? Share your tips and/or experience [/su_list] [/su_box]

      I noticed a number of my friends build cultures or subcultures in their organizations with social media. The last election in this country however, heavily weighed down social media as a political tool, convoluting a once novel way of building culture with this platform. I’d like to ignite the spark with this chat. Join us in this interesting discussion!

      Image by wavebreakmedia_micro on Freepik

  • Nurturing Safe and Braves Spaces on Social Media

    Social media has been a “comfortable” space ever since I joined most of these platforms. This is not just because I’m comfortable with computers and the internet, but mainly because I tend to gravitate and collaborate with people that allow me to grow in this space. In other words, I felt psychologically safe to grow in some groups I am with in social media.

    Two presidential elections and a pandemic drastically changed that “comfortable, safe” social media space. Sometimes, social media is so toxic I had to belabor curating my feed. Add to the difficulty is the changing algorithm of social media feeds, which is getting out of our control more than ever. Now I have to really do social media sabbaticals just to save my sanity from the milee.

    I (and I guess a number of others) wanted at east to reclaim this safe space on social media. And we cannot do it alone. I remember my coach telling me, “if you want a safe space, make one for others first”. This is the topic of our #HealthXPh chat this Saturday June 11, 2022 9PM Manila time.

    Psychological safety is defined as the

    belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. A shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking

    -Edmonson 1999

    Today we will be revisiting the safe and brave spaces #HealthXPH as well as other #HCSM group started for other healthcare professionals to grow their networks on social media. We would seek advice from our colleagues on social media how they did make “safe and brave’ spaces t grow on social media.

    According to Clarke (2020) there are four stages of psychological safety in an environment- Inclusion Safety, Learner safety, Contributor safety and Challenger Safety. Let’s discuss how you can contribute to creating these stages of safe spaces.

    T1. How can you promote inclusion safety on social media?

    This stage simply meant all people in your social media group felt welcomed and included. I remember when we first formed #Healthxph, it was so informal and I felt very much welcomed even though we’re miles apart and very diverse persons at that. Some of us don’t know a thing about social media platforms. We included them first then helped them along the way. And we tried all platforms first to see what worked for all of us!

    T2. How can you promote learner safety on social media?

    Learner safety means “being able to ask questions, give and receive feedback, experiment, and make mistakes”. #HealthXPh is a very learning group. We assured each other we’ll help in everyone’s learning “the ropes” in social media. We have been doing this with our various summits and workshops since 2015. Here every time I speak in front of summit attendees, I often ask “what if I’m wrong”? One would answer, well we will know and learn together. Just go and do it”

    T3. How can you promote Contributor safety on social media?

    Contributor safety means “being able to participate as a member of the team, contribute ideas and suggestions, and raise threats and risks using members’ individual talents and abilities to contribute to the team without fear”. At #HealthXPh, each one contributes his or her best abilities. And even in areas where you have very minimal abilities, your contribution builds the overall program of the group. And since none were mainly an expert on everything in social media, we tried to contribute what we learned along our journey.

    T4. How can you promote challenger safety on social media?

    Challenger safety meant “being able to challenge the way the team works, come up with new ways of working, behaviours, and challenge the ideas of others – even the ideas of senior members” . We had some very controversial discussions at #HealthXPh, and even on twitter. We provide and hosted topics that were rather unpopular or divisive. #HealthXPh in some ways been able to diffuse the tension and made the discussion safe for everyone to contribute or challenge. This is what I later learned as increasing the ” academic tension but decreasing the social tension”. Social media feedbacking is very important here and we have tackled that in so many tweetchats before.

    Psychologically safe space is the “underpinning of high performing teams, bringing out creativity and innovation in teams” says Amy Edmonson in Fearless Organization. In one recent workshop I attended I heard one speaker mention ‘bravespace” for safe space. Indeed, if in the last stage of Psychological safety meant we are “safe” to challenge status quo in social media, then “brave space” would be an apt term.

    I am inviting you once again to join #HealthXPh tweetchat this Saturday June 11, 2022 9PM Manila time. See you all!