One of my best-loved activities is to poke around in small town shops. The other day, I announced to my favorite person that a road trip was in order. That led us grabbing our road trip snacks and setting off.
The town was charming with loads of little shops to explore. One store was just perfect — tin ceiling, groupings of items and stuff all over the place. I turned the corner and there it was, the sign of all signs, “Don’t grow up! It is a trap!” I laughed out loud and then looked around to see who might have noticed.
Therein lies the trap. When spontaneous delight overtakes us, we are immediately reminded of the rules of engagement that we unconsciously abide by as we move throughout our day. We are reminded that the life we live is serious. We are reminded that the work that we do is serious. When you ask our friend Webster, serious is defined as “demanding, careful consideration or application, thoughtful, or profound…”
Recently, I lost a childhood friend suddenly and tragically. This was a person who knew me when I lost my two front teeth. As we celebrated his life, the stories of our shared childhood came pouring out. Stories of us doing stupid things gained the loudest laughter. Being together, laughing and remembering eased the profound pain of saying goodbye. As I boarded my flight, my mind wandered to the stories…
May is the month of celebrations. Nurses, Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Older Americans, and Emergency Medical Services all have dates of celebration in the month of May. I have been accountable for Nurses week for most of my career. I would spend days to weeks writing my heartfelt speech that I would deliver at some function we had scheduled. Years later, it was not my carefully crafted words that are remembered.
It is the Nursing Olympics where we did bedpan relays carrying pans filled with chocolate pudding mixed in with kernels of corn on our heads. It is the executive team dressing up as the cast from “Grease” decorating a stretcher as our race car singing modified words to the song, “Greased Lightning.” It is the cookie bake-off, which brought out the bake-off sharks and the cookie monsters.
It is the recycled art contest that showed off the creative talents of nurses in reusing what we normally threw into the garbage. I still have a Christmas wreath made from the wrappers of syringes. It is the laughter and the togetherness that made these events last in the memory banks of all involved.
The sign, while it made me laugh, also made me stop and think. We give away our ability to have fun as we become more serious, more careful with our intentions. This year more than ever, our teams need leaders to find their inner willingness to bring fun and laughter back into the workplace.
Gallup recently released its findings on why employees are leaving. Most leaders will say money. One of the key findings cited as a driving factor was, in fact, discontentment. The data showed that people unplugged mentally and then they left. The Catch-22 is the new hires are landing on teams with individuals who are disengaged. Quickly they become discouraged and question their decision of employment.
In my partnership with leaders across the nation, the challenges of engagement, staffing and salaries is many times the first items we speak about as we develop action plans.
One of the questions I ask is what are they doing to make their facility memorable? Recognition is critical, and so is assuring that wages are within fair market value. Those alone do not make the workplace memorable.
So, for the month of May, the month of celebrations, what are you doing to make your facilities memorable?
Martie L. Moore, MAOM, RN, CPHQ, is the CEO of M2WL Consulting. She has been an executive healthcare leader for more than 20 years. She has served on advisory boards for the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel and the American Nurses Association, and she currently serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of Central Florida College of Nursing and Sigma, International Honor Society for Nursing. She was honored by Saint Martin’s University with an honorary doctorate degree for her service and accomplishments in advancing healthcare.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
