Wellness Week – 11-17th March 2018! #EMWW18
Once considered “the soft stuff”, there is increasingly compelling evidence that the concepts of Wellness, Resilience and Performance are in fact a core part of Emergency Medicine practice. We firmly believe that Emergency Department (ED) staff who look after their wellness, and work in an environment where they are supported to do so, provide better patient care.
As part of our endeavour to bring the conversation about wellness to the forefront, we have collaborated with the team at the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the ALiEM Wellness Think Tank in North America to conduct Wellness Week from 11 – 17 March 2018. Wellness Week in Australia and New Zealand is proudly supported by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).
Our aims are to:
- Ignite conversations around wellness, and its relationship to professionalism and performance.
- Provide ED staff with some tools to start this process within their departments.
- Facilitate connections so that we can support each other on this journey and build momentum in order to make this movement sustainable.
Each day of Wellness Week is themed on one spoke of the Wellness Wheel.1,2 Resources will be uploaded each day of that week on the WRaP EM blog. Follow us on twitter @wrapemtweet for live updates. Share your department’s activities on twitter using the #EMWW18.
We can conceptualise wellness as a wheel with separate spokes. Each spoke is critical for the wheel to keep turning. Similarly, wellness is multidimensional. By looking at wellness this way, we can see how these elements are interconnected and contribute to how we live – indeed, to how we thrive. However, each Emergency Department staff member may choose to prioritise these spokes in a different way2.
Strategies for enhancing the Wellness, Resilience and Performance of ED staff can be considered in two main categories:
- Personal strategies – what you need to do as an individual to maintain your own wellbeing
- Organisational strategies – what our organisations can be encouraged and enabled to do
Both categories of strategies are equally important – not only do they tackle wellness holistically; they demonstrate a shared commitment to enhancing and optimising ED staff. It is easy to feel defeated by the system or organisation. However, it is worth considering changing your mindset around these system challenges, and making small changes in your circle of influence to ensure that you and your colleagues are better cared for at work.
The attached Seven Spokes of Wellness diagram below outlines some examples of strategies as they relate to each of the spokes. It is important to remember that not all strategies are suited to every individual or every department, so these are simply ideas to inspire you to develop strategies that suit local needs and climates.
We challenge you to try and adopt one personal strategy this week. Perhaps an organisational change can be the goal for the year.
We invite you to join us on this journey – we encourage ED’s to include a wellness based topic in their education sessions that week, and to identify small changes that could be made to improve staff wellbeing. The Seven Spokes of Wellness diagram can be printed in A3 and used as a conversation starter when you are planning your department’s Wellness Strategy. Share your departments activities on twitter using the #EMWW18.
Make one small change towards your wellbeing this week. We can’t stop the waves but we can learn to ride them together!
Dates for Wellness week 2018!
Sunday 11th March – Occupational spoke
Monday 12th March – Emotional spoke
Tuesday 13th March – Physical spoke
Wednesday 14th March – Financial spoke
Thursday 15th March – Spiritual spoke
Friday 16th March – Social spoke
Saturday 17th March – Intellectual spoke
References:
- http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.nationalwellness.org/resource/resmgr/docs/sixdimensionsfactsheet.pdf
- https://akosmed.com/2016/01/01/the-wellness-wheel/
- Being Well in Emergency Medicine: ACEP’s Guide to Investing in Yourself. Rita Manfredi, MD, FACEP and Julia M. Huber, MD, FACEP
WRaP EM 