Reactivating hope in your healthcare career
A free, online, one hour class for health professionals looking for practical steps towards thriving in healthcare.
Moving from the pit of despair to action-based hope in healthcare.
The antidote to despair is hope.
If you've been anywhere near an emergency department, seen the news, or attempted to access a health service lately, you'll know that healthcare services, and the workers in them, are struggling.
Workforce shortages, under-resourced systems and the impacts of moral distress and exhaustion are leaving workers feeling stuck, frustrated, demoralised and feeling hopeless and helpless to do anything about it.
No one likes to feel hopeless.
It's a place that leaves us with nowhere to go; a place where we are out of ideas, out of options, and at times, in a state of despair.
Despair may sound a tad dramatic; but if we look at the Cambridge Dictionary's definition ("a feeling of being without hope or of not being able to improve a situation") it's right on par with what I'm seeing and hearing from so many health professionals.
'The antidote to despair is hope', but it is not found through rose-coloured glasses, toxic positivity, wishful thinking or blind faith.
What I'm talking about is a pathway of action-based hope grounded in:
- values
- ethics and accountability
- self leadership
- presence and connection
- imagination
- community (we can't do this alone)
The hope I am talking about is not optimism or positivity, but the hard work of trying to resist despair and resist abandoning people to personal suffering and to collective contexts of injustice.
Taking action towards hope in healthcare
In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection , Brené Brown describes a 3-step process to hope:
- setting a goal
- taking steps towards this goal
- having a belief that we can achieve the goal (a sense of agency)
This all seems reasonable when we are travelling well, or when we've hit a few roadblocks and we are still able to pull ourselves through.
But what do we do when are truly in a pit of despair?
When all hope seems lost and we can't see a way out?
The Princess Bride and The Pit of Despair
For anyone familiar with the much-loved 1987 film of true love, hope, friendship and overcoming adversity, The Princess Bride, you will know that Wesley (seen above trapped in the Pit of Despair) does not make it out alone.
He can't because he is strapped to 'The Machine', having the life sucked out of him year by year.
How does "poor, sweet Wesley" make it out of a slow, torturous death?
Not by himself - that is for sure!
No, it is his enemy-captors-turned-friends, Fezzik and Inigo who haul him of the Pit in a 'mostly-dead' state, and take him to Miracle Max to work his magic and bring Wesley wholly back to life.
What does The Princess Bride teach healthcare workers about moving out of despair?
As healthcare workers, we can often feel that we are in our own Pit of Despair, feeling trapped in a job that just doesn't seem to align with what we thought that we signed up for.
We can heed from Buttercup, Wesley, Inigo and Fezzik and implement their lessons:
- A plan is essential (thanks Brené).
- We can't do it alone (we need collective care).
- Have faith.
- Creativity and imagination go a long way.
If you'd like to know more about an action-based approach from turning despair into hope in your healthcare career, join us on Thursday 23 January for this free online training: Reactivating hope in your healthcare career.
But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then hope will come.
Related Resources
Header image: Gary Meulemans