Zen lounges and yoga are helping HCA Houston Healthcare nurses relieve stress and avoid burnout
Personnel participate in a yoga session during"wellness Wednesday" at HCA Houston Healthcare Clear Lake Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022, in Webster.When an ICU patient died earlier this month at HCA Houston Healthcare Clear Lake, clinical nurse coordinator Madison Chollett asked the patient’s nurse to join her in one of the hospital’s Zen lounges.
Every Wednesday, a “wellness wagon” delivers stress-relieving goodies to nurses. There are yoga sessions where nurses learn a “pose of the week” designed to help them relax. And a pilot program at the Clear Lake campus is testing “uninterrupted lunch breaks,” because a survey found nurses were being interrupted 10 to 15 times each lunch.American Nurses Foundation survey
During the pandemic, nurses were caring for more patients and seeing more of them suffer or die, McIntyre said. The fear of bringing the virus home led to stress in their personal lives, too. “Nurses, nursing teams, physicians — they all stepped up at a time when the community needed them the most,” Camacho said. “…It’s time now we step up and provide those same resources and support as they navigate through [PTSD], burnout, stress and anxiety.”
“We’re learning, as older nurses, to speak a new language. A language that we’re not familiar with,” she said. “That’s the cultural shift that we need to create in these work environments.” “It is really amazing, witnessing that,” Welty said. “Some staff will get on the floor with the dog and just start crying.”