Leadership Sessions to Highlight Wellness and Culture

Strategies to promote employee wellness and workforce retention will be recurring themes in the leadership and management sessions at Emergency Nursing 2022 in Denver.

“The goal is to assist us in creating a healthy work environment and a culture of community,” said Dustin Bass, assistant vice president of emergency services at Atrium Health Cabarrus in North Carolina. “This post-pandemic era has exacerbated all of these problems that we’ve known for a long time and we’ve been trying to mitigate.”

Bass will outline tactics to establish intentional communication, build relationships and foster intentional self-awareness during “Amplify Your Awesomeness: Leading Your Team to Create a Psychologically Safe Environment.” The livestreamed session will be at 9:45 a.m. Mountain time on Oct. 2, in Rooms 401-402-403-404.

“Many nurses are exhausted, they are morally injured, they’re burned out and some are considering leaving the profession much earlier than predicted,” said Bass, a member of the ENA Board of Directors. “We have to do some intentional, thoughtful work on building a culture so that we don’t continue to lose nurses and so that we can continue to care for our patients.” 

Victoria Nash will discuss how the Louisiana emergency department where she works created a wellness room during “Prioritizing ED Staff Wellness,” a session at 9:30 a.m. Mountain time on Oct. 1 in Rooms 505-506-507. She will detail the logistics of obtaining funding, choosing a location and selecting products for the space.

Dialogue about the need for staff wellness resources at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital took on a new urgency in the wake of four major disasters in two years — hurricanes, flooding and a major ice storm — alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. But the need for such resources as a retention tool exists without natural disasters.

“A lot of people are focused on the major nursing shortage that we have right now. There’s a lot of focus toward recruitment of new employees and they’re offering sign-on bonuses, but it’s still important to recognize the staff that chooses to stay and to show up every day to work even when it’s hard and to reward them for that,” Nash said.

With staff input, the ED put together a dedicated wellness room with a massage chair, a fitness corner with hand weights and yoga mats, a desktop zen garden and more.

“Hopefully people can see this presentation and see that it’s actually doable for them,” Nash said. “It can be done, and it’s not as hard as they might think.”

Gina Slobogin, a family nurse practitioner in Delaware, will address self-doubt in the workplace on Oct. 2. Starting at 8 a.m. Mountain time in Rooms 501-502-503-504, “Self-Sabotage, Self-Confidence and Imposter Syndrome” will define imposter syndrome, how and why it affects nurses, and how to cope with it.

“In nursing, the reality is that time, staffing and other workforce issues don’t usually allow us the time to develop our skills and confidence at our own pace, which can sometimes lead to imposter syndrome because we feel like we haven’t had the time to develop those skills to the level that we feel they should be,” Slobogin said.

In female-dominated professions like nursing, imposter syndrome is more prevalent than in other fields. Three-quarters of executive women in all professions report experiencing imposter syndrome, Slobogin said, and 47 percent of executive women report their self-doubt stems from not expecting to achieve the level of success they have.

Men who experience imposter syndrome report greater anxiety after receiving negative feedback than their female counterparts.

“A lot of people don’t understand the feelings that they’re feeling when they have imposter syndrome,” Slobogin said. “It happens to people more often than we realize. We just don’t know what it is. Hopefully through this session we’ll be able to clarify those feelings and cope with them.” 

Additional leadership and management sessions include the following (all listings are in Mountain time).

• Epigenetic Leadership — The Intergenerational Ripple Effect of Your Words, Actions, and Behaviors — Sept. 30, 1:30 to 5 p.m., Rooms 505-506-507; this pre-session activity requires additional registration and a fee
• Emergency Department Finance: Beyond the Basics — Oct. 1, 10:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., Rooms 108-110-112
• Community Hospital + Academia = Successful RN Recruitment Strategy — Oct. 1, 4:30 to 5:15 p.m., Rooms 205-207
• No Rooms, No Staff, No Problem! Using PIT and VED in a Pediatric ED for Maximal Throughput with Minimal Resources — Oct. 2, 8:45 to 9:30 a.m., Four Seasons Ballroom; livestreamed
• Emotional Intelligence and Compassion Fatigue in Emergency Nurses — Oct. 2, 4:30 to 5:15 p.m., Room 401-402-403-404; livestreamed
• Care in an ER: The Ultimate Career — Oct. 2, 5:30 to 6 p.m., Rooms 205-207
• When the ED is burning down (literally)–Fire in the unit. — Oct. 3, 10:15 to 10:45 a.m., Rooms 401-402-403-404; livestreamed