The Zone of Fabulousness and the price of disconnection for healthcare workers (and the people they serve)

Finding myself in a hospital room, shaking with fury, my ears buzzing with the loudness of the silence, as I gave my ultimatum to the doctor in charge of my mum’s care was the last thing I expected.

All of it was a shock:

• The poorly resourced healthcare system, leading to understaffing and a dangerous eagerness to discharge my mum well before it was clinically safe to do so.
• The insensitivity to patients and families (nurses jubilantly high-fiving each other as they listed all the beds they had “gotten rid of”, as patients wait for pain relief, should only happen behind closed doors).
• The level of disconnection and disinterest shown by the workers, and the subsequent poor work ethic that accelerated my mum’s ill-health.
• And finally, the fact that the doctor in front of me appeared to be checked out in his role, leaving him apparently apathetic in relation to his clinical responsibilities.

I look at this and think it sounds like I'm exaggerating.

But I'm not.

A disconnected workforce.

My work centres around supporting health professionals.

I offer therapeutic support, clinical supervision and professional learning for healthcare workers to support positive outcomes and thriving for clinicians and the people whom they serve.

Day after day, in my practice I see, hear and feel the challenges of stress, burnout and overwhelm in hardworking healthcare workers due to systemic failures.

So, whilst I know about this professionally and academically, it was something else altogether to experience the personal impact of a workforce who appeared to be operating from a places of numbness, disinterest and disconnection: to themselves and to the patient - my mum - they were engaged to treat.

How does this happen?

No one enters healthcare to become a disengaged, disinterested and ineffective practitioner.

We know that health professionals:

• experienced a deterioration in mental health through the COVID-19 pandemic,
• are hurting at rates higher than the general population,
• and have been for some time.

Two of the key ways that we manage emotional distress, particularly as health professionals are through:

1. becoming overly involved with our patients / clients
2. disengaging and disconnecting from ourselves, as well as the people around us

One way to understand this is through Vikki Reynold's 'Zone of Fabulousness' - see the 6 minute video below.

The concepts within the 'Zone of Fabulousness' help us to understand a little more about why we need more comprehensive understandings of how to stay ethical and well in the work.