Finding Wellness in Nature

This is my own personal image of Blue Mountain Lake from Castle Rock Trailhead in the Adirondacks last September.

Working in the ER is tough, and hopefully sometime in the next week, we can all spend some quality time outdoors. Today’s POTD is on finding Wellness in nature.

This study published in Nature on June 13, 2019 is titled “Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing”.

Here’s a summary:

The authors studied the association between recreational nature contact in the last seven days and self-reported health and well-being.

They ascertained data from nearly 20,000 participants in the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey, a UK survey that tries to capture time spent in the natural environment.

The likelihood of reporting good health or high well-being was statistically significant with > 120 minutes of outdoor engagement compared to no nature contact. It can be either 120 minutes at a time or several shorter blocks each week, it did not matter.

The peak benefit was around 200-300 minutes per week of recreational nature contact.

Hopefully one day when we finally defeat COVID, we’ll have the freedom to once again travel freely. In the meantime, why not hit up a local park, wander around the city, or for a hike? Socially distancing of course. Here’s one website I’ve been using extensively since medical school:

https://hikethehudsonvalley.com/the-hikes/

Sources

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3

Failing Up

It as a given that we will fail.  All of us.  Medical or not.  We are all human, which means we make mistakes. So once we accept this as fact, we can then move towards failing better.

When we make a medical error we have a few choices:

1. Live in perpetual doubt

Blame yourself and practice defensive medicine

2. Ignore the error and do nothing, stop caring

 

3. Failing up – learn from the fail

-       Learning from your medical error takes effort, consideration and time -makes one even more accountable, compassionate and competent.

-       We are all going to fail.

-       When one sweep failures under the carpet, one cannot learn from them effectively and neither can one heal from them effectively

-       Learning to accept this eventuality and incorporating it into our daily life, will allow us to grow as individuals, to more effectively teach others and to take better care of our patients.

-       Strive for post traumatic growth and thriving after failure instead of feelings of shame and isolation.

Failing up strategies:

-       Find a Failure Friend: An empathetic work friend who understands the context; someone who is your safety net and in return you can be their safety net.

-       Be a good Failure Friend to a colleague: Listen/hear them out and empathize/provide affirmation rather than giving advice or solutions. Use reflective listening like you would with a patient and then come up with a joint plan.

-       Teach from your mistakes: Give talks around your difficult cases that incorporate personal strategies on how to cope after the fact, rather than only concentrating on the medical aspects of the case. Talk with peers, residents and medstudents

Watch this excellent FeminEM talk by Dr Sara Gray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGS6O98p4Q8

References:

https://emergencymedicinecases.com/preventing-burnout-promoting-wellness-emergency-medicine/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/331332

https://saragray.org/2017/03/07/failure-friends/

Box Breathing Technique

Box Breathing Technique   

Next time you’re on shift and get a notification for a baby in arrest or have to prep the neck for a cric take a minute to do some Box Breathing to get you prepped and mentally ready

·      Easy, Quick and Navy SEAL approved

·      Effective in anxiety, insomnia, pain management and even labor!

·      Box breathing with this 4-4-4- ratio has a net neutral energetic effect

·      It’s not going to charge you up or put you into a sleepy relaxed state. But it will, as mentioned, make you very alert and grounded, ready for action.

·      To begin, expel all of the air from your chest.

·      Keep your lungs empty for a four-count hold.

·      Then, inhale through the nose for four counts.

·      Hold the air in your lungs for a four-count hold.

·      When you hold your breath, do not clamp down and create back pressure. Rather, maintain an open, neutral feeling even though you are not inhaling.

·      When ready, release the hold and exhale smoothly through your nose for four counts. This is one circuit of the box-breathing practice.

·      Repeat this cycle for at least five minutes to get the full effect.  

References

Dr Arlene Chung

TIME

https://www.mindfulwellnessrochester.com/single-post/2017/06/02/Box-Breathing-for-Anxiety-Stress-Reduction