Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1333042
January 25-February 22, 2021 • Find reasons to celebrate everything you can. • Make a point every day to compliment your coworkers to their faces AND behind their backs. • Shut down complaining by sharing good things happening in your department. • Go out of your way to spread joyful news. If stress and negativity are con- tagious, then so are kindness and caring. Random acts of kindness have been shown to create more happiness for the person giving than the person receiving. Therefore, it stands to reason that more joy can be created among the team in the same way. Why not start a "kindness rev- olution" in your department? Your teams will thank you! Buy a coworker a cup of good coffee and put it on his or her desk. I'm a huge notecard fan; why not find an inspira- tional notecard and give it to a coworker who might not expect it? You can also boost morale by cleaning up the break room (including that awful, disgusting microwave) even if you didn't create the mess. When COVID-19 hit and schools were starting to close, a nurse shared with her coworkers her concern that she had nobody to care for her children that week. She was distraught and didn't know what she would do. Two other nurses, who didn't have children, got together with her, looked at all their schedules and rearranged their hours so that she could be home until she found childcare. That's showing kindness to someone in need. Do something every day to be thoughtful towards a coworker — especially the cranky ones who need it most. Nursing is one of the most stressful professions in the world. Life and death situations happen every day, without warning. The unpredictability of our work can lead to stress and burnout. Yet, we do an inadequate job teaching nurses good coping mechanisms. Did you know that laughter is THE BEST way to decrease stress? When we laugh, we release feel-good chemicals that flood our brains with joy- fulness, helping to counteract the effects of cortisol and other stress hormones. Better still, laughing is free. Find ways to inject humor (appropriate humor) and reasons to laugh into your workplace. When Monica, a staff nurse, walks into her department at the start of her shift, she arrives singing and dancing. Everyone in earshot laughs and starts dancing with her (well, not everyone dances!). It's so easy to get offended by what people say or write, especially on social media. This year, make an effort to lighten up a bit. Refuse to allow yourself to be aggrieved by others or be sucked into the vortex of critical gossip and backbiting. Instead, seek to understand others' points of view and opinions, or else just ignore them and let it go. The strongest and most cohe- sive teams are diverse ones whose members can bring different per- spectives to the work. Being differ- ent is a good thing! Especially if you've been a nurse for a long time, you should think about the legacy you want to leave when you're no longer practicing. Be that nurse now. Show up every day ready and willing to do every- thing in your power to epitomize professionalism, collaborative communication and what team cohesion really looks like. As they say, "Be the type of nurse you want to work with." Don't wait — start now, and also try to be the type of teammate you want in your unit. 3 NO BE THOUGHTFUL 4 NO BE FUN 5 NO BE TOLERANT 6 NO BE A ROLE MODEL "Be the type of nurse you want to work with." (Continued on Page 21)