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

3 July 2024

The overwhelm for healthcare workers is real, and can come at significant costs - for workers, patients and, as I recently discovered, for the families of patients too. The 'Zone of Fabulousness' , a concept from Vikki Reynolds, offers a way of understanding the dynamics and consequences for service users and workers alike. How we can we as health professionals keep ourselves well - for the sake of our clients as well as ourselves? Have a look below.

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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:

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.

What can the Zone of Fabulousness tell us about the price of disconnection in healthcare?

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.

If you would like to know more about these ideas, you may be interested in this free resource:

'5 Reasons Self Care Doesn't Work' - an 8 minute mini-training video and guide,

Related Resources

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We can hardly explore the joy-pain spectrum in helping roles without looking at the pointy end. While previous blogs in this 5-part series explored the positive, protective factors, this post examines the risks in empathic connection when working with those who are suffering. Here, we will consider the symptoms, contributing factors and the differences between empathic strain (compassion fatigue), burnout, secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma.

The vicarious impacts of helping work: the joy and the pain

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Header image: Jametlene