Beyond Wellness Week: “Improving our culture from the ground up and the top down”
FACEM Dr Alison Robinson is an ED consultant with SA Health and says she’s “really fortunate because we’ve got a very diverse team with a big focus on wellness”.
She says food is a staple to help nurture that wellness – as an important feature during ACEM Wellness Week 2024, but also throughout the year.
For Alison and her colleagues, it is a core ingredient at the heart of celebrations and commemorations of important events within the emergency department. It’s also available as a regular provision to help sustain busy staff members and encourage those important – albeit sometimes brief – moments to connect with fellow ED team members during a shift.
“We provide bread and cheese into the ED, which everyone loves, and there is always the opportunity to have a hot snack,” Alison says.
FACEM Dr Alison Robinson says wellness initiatives help counter the reality that ED work is volatile and complex.
Focusing on wellness in EDs is important, she says, because the nature of emergency medicine work is “relentless, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous”, and the leaders working within that pressured environment have “a high decision burden and frequent interruptions”.
““We also find that, during Wellness Week, we have demonstrated to our staff – particularly our juniors – that they have permission for self-care.””
“In order to bring order to the chaos and heartache of people we encounter in our lives – the patients – we need greater compassion. What we do is not normal, it’s not something people in normal society deal with,” she says.
“When we don’t look after ourselves, it has the potential to affect our relationship with the patient – especially when we are pressured by access block and staff pressures.”
But “if we maintain a wellbeing perspective through the work challenges we face”, Alison says the benefits of what she describes as “transferrable skills” flow on to personal lives outside of the ED too.
“We can use the same approach to help cope with other areas of our lives. We can use wellbeing as a resource to help us navigate lots of different challenges.”
Alison says her own commitment to wellness is about helping ensure sustainability for her career, “and for everyone in my team to feel that way so the team works better”.
“Beyond Wellness Week – the things that we are part of during the week and the social cohesion we’ve created – we see those things continue,” Alison says.
FACEM Dr Alison Robinson (centre) with some of her SA Health ED colleagues.
“We also find that, during Wellness Week, we have demonstrated to our staff – particularly our juniors – that they have permission for self-care.”
Dedicated ‘wellbeing champion’
FACEM Dr Bishan Rajapakse is an emergency physician at Shellharbour Hospital in New South Wales.
ACEM Wellness Week 2024 marks the third year he’s been involved in the initiative and Bishan describes the task of implementing a greater focus on wellness into the ED as “very challenging”.
But as a ‘wellbeing champion’ in his workplace, Bishan says the commitment to helping achieve better wellness in Australian EDs is important “in terms of making sure we have a sustainable workforce”.
““There is more research being done in this area and you can see measurable change as a result of focusing on wellness for ED staff.””
“If we do not prioritise self-care, we will not be able to transfer care to our patients,” Bishan says.
“It helps address the high burnout rates in emergency medicine.”
In his own life away from the ED, Bishan says he has seen the positives of practising wellbeing on a personal level and says surfing, meditation and quality time with family play powerful parts.
“And I can also see the benefits of practising it on an organisational level,” he says. “There is more research being done in this area and you can see measurable change as a result of focusing on wellness for ED staff.”
He says it’s great to hear everyone talking about wellness during Wellness Week but says his team’s bigger goal is establish a ‘wellness organising committee’ that can help manage wellbeing-related activities and events throughout the year. He is grateful to have joined forces with two other FACEMs in his department, as well as other emerging wellbeing champions, to help achieve a growing wellness movement locally and across their health district.
In his own workplace, Bishan says holding farewell dinners, as well as supporting a diverse range of cultural festivals – including Ramadan, Pesach, Diwali and Christmas – help create a genuinely inclusive environment that makes people feel seen and welcome.
“Knowing your team – the humans behind the skillset – matters,” Bishan says, adding that small things make a big difference to ease the load.
“It’s a tough gig, what we do.”
During ACEM Wellness Week 2024, FACEM Dr Bishan Rajapakse joined other ED team members to take the ice bath challenge on the beach.
Making time for self-care
Prioritising self-care is not easy, Bishan says, but it is important to practice at every level.
“Promoting wellbeing in EDs is about creating the culture – at a senior level, at a FACEM level – that tells team members you have the space to focus on wellness here,” says Bishan. “To me, that’s the goal. It’s still a work-in-progress but keeping people inspired starts by improving our culture from the ground up and the top down. None of these wellness initiatives will happen unless we have good operational leadership.”
Two messages he does want to share is “doing something is better than doing nothing” and "teamwork makes the dream work" as “we are all in this together.”
“Starting the conversation is really important. Do one thing for yourself and don’t treat it like an exam. There is no passing or failing it. It is definitely more about the journey than the destination.”
‘Bish’ says supporting more sustainable wellness activity in his own ED is an important goal that has benefits for the entire team and their care delivery.
Providing wellness leadership in the ED, he says, is about asking people “what they want to do to create greater wellness: what are their suggestions?”
“Let’s have some fun, let’s keep the conversation going. In essence, my greater goal is to use Wellness Week as a platform to create networks to support more sustainable wellness activity that helps everyone feel better and perform better.”
ACEM Wellness Week 2024 runs from 19-26 May.
