In the healthcare industry, the most important and vital asset is the human resource - the employees. As healthcare pressures, we check for vital signs in our patients: body temperature, pulse, respiration rate, and blood pressure. But how often do managers check the vital signs of their teams? How often do you check in on your own vital signs? The health and wellness of our healthcare workers directly correlates to better patient care, healed outcomes, and patient satisfaction. But right now, our industry is in the midst of a crisis of fatigue, burnout, and extreme levels of stress. Our reputation is sullen and our rapport with each other is at an all-time low. There is no cohesion, support, or camaraderie amongst ourselves. Only distrust, resentment, and a growing sense that nobody cares. But we can change this! In order to have buy-in from your staff, they have to believe that management cares - not just about patients, but about them too.

In this signature talk, I will go through how to give your staff the tools and resources they need to self-manage and then empower them to do so. Demonstrate that they are and will be supported by your leadership, and that they are not only allowed to but encouraged to take time off to care for themselves. With these tools and actionable steps, you will see a team that is able to sleep better, manage their stress, and avoid burnout. When you improve the material conditions of their personal lives, the professional output follows suit. When the human behind the nurse is taken care of, they are then able to operate at their highest and best capacity at work. They will look out for each other and naturally build an environment of mutual trust and care that will produce positive and successful outcomes.

Managing differences in the workplace is critical to its overall success. When you combine varying personality types and a high-stress, fast-paced environment, conflict is an absolute inevitability.

In this talk, I go through my three decades of experience in different sectors and departments of the healthcare industry and demonstrate what I’ve learned and proven methods that aid in both conflict resolution and prevention. In this talk, we’ll go through easy-to-implement actionable steps like incorporating accountability systems, plans of care, and encouraging free and safe vocalizations of error and then empowering self-led and managed action plans for future scenarios. Management cannot behave as an unseen dictator. You need to be involved in your team’s day-to-day, you need to care about the outcomes and demonstrate that you are a safe place to come to when conflict arises. This is achieved by leading by example. Trust is built, it cannot be faked or bought. Show your team that you make mistakes, too. By owning up to your own errors or shortcomings swiftly and being transparent about how you will ensure it won’t happen again, you will naturally engender an environment where your team will not only feel comfortable to do so themselves, they will encourage each other to show up as their best selves.

I’ve always said that every pivot I’ve ever made was in response to a deep, intrinsic, primal need. Understanding your “why” is critical to your success. It will assist you in determining how you work, what kind of care you provide, and your level of satisfaction. And of course, these questions (and their answers) also impact the people around you: how you engage with colleagues and upper management determine how you are perceived in the workplace and ultimately your trajectory and how well (or not) you get paid.

In this talk, I will walk you through how to identify how you may be hindering your own perception of self and how that correlates to how others are receiving you. By identifying your hero story and personality archetype, you will be able to determine where your self-assessments may or may not align with what you bring into the workplace every day. This is why understanding why you chose this profession in the first place is of the utmost importance. The answer to that question determines your next steps both in and beyond healthcare. You can’t formulate your plan without knowing where you’ve come from. By taking inventory of your toolkit and identifying the gaps present you will be better equipped to take the necessary steps to flesh out your knowledge base and then start that business, or apply for that leadership position. And from there, they’ll know what options are available to them. When people can see that you’ve already put in the work, they are more inclined to want to help you move forward.