July 12, 2015

What are the synergies between mindfulness and creativity?

Mindfulness is a popular topic at the moment. Research demonstrates positive effects on mental health, such as this meta-analysis by Hofmann et al., 2010, and supports benefits for physical health parameters, including cardiovascular health in this study by Loucks et al., 2014.

I have posted before about the intersection between health and creativity.

So what about mindfulness and creativity?

P1020115 (2)

Firstly, what is mindfulness?

Hofmann et al., 2010 describe mindfulness as

“a process that leads to a mental state characterized by nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment experience, including one’s sensations, thoughts, bodily states, consciousness, and the environment, while encouraging openness, curiosity, and acceptance (Bishop et al., 2004; Kabat-Zinn, 2003;Melbourne Academic Mindfulness Interest Group, 2006). Bishop and colleagues (2004) distinguished two components of mindfulness, one that involves self-regulation of attention and one that involves an orientation toward the present moment characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.”

Simply put, being mindful is allowing yourself to be aware of and non-judgmentally experience the moment.

What does the research tell us about mindfulness and creativity?

Studies and articles have mostly focused on how mindfulness meditation can benefit creativity and/or creative thinking in the broader sense.

If you wish to explore the psychology, theories include that mindfulness may enhance creativity by reducing cognitive rigidity (Greenberg, Reiner, and Meiran, 2012) and facilitating divergent thinking/reducing convergent thinking (Capurso, Fabbro and Crescentini, 2013).

George Hofmann writes in his post on How Mindfulness Can Help Your Creativity:

“Researchers at the Institute for Psychological Research and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition of Leiden University in the Netherlands found a tremendous impact of focused-attention (mindfulness) and open-monitoring meditation (observing without judging) on creativity. 

“First, Open-Minded meditation induces a control state that promotes divergent thinking, a style of thinking that allows many new ideas of being generated. Second, Focused Attention meditation does not sustain convergent thinking, the process of generating one possible solution to a particular problem.” Meditation may equal more ideas.”

Or for a good post on how mindfulness can boost creativity, this post from the Mindfulness Workbook For Dummies may inspire you. I especially agree with the tip about not having to meditate to be mindful. (I confess I am not very good at just sitting and meditating.)

I can easily understand how quietening your thoughts can reduce distraction and open your mind to creative possibilities.

But can creative pursuits help you achieve a state of mindfulness?

I couldn’t find any research on whether being creative can help you be mindful. (If you know of any, please point me in the right direction by posting a comment!)

So this is unapologetically not scientific, but my personal experience is that I need to be creative to be mindful.

By expressing my creativity I can access a deeper level of mindfulness. In fact when I manage to silence my internal critic and create in the moment, I achieve a state of mindfulness purer than that I have managed with mindfulness meditation and more satisfying creative work to boot.

Creativity and mindfulness are synergistic, not a linear relationship with one facilitating the other.

This description of mindfulness in drawing from The Centre for Mindfulness Studies comes close to how I feel when I write in the moment.

I don’t just need to be mindful to boost creativity; at least some of us need to be creative to enhance our mindfulness.

What is your experience of mindfulness and creativity?

I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences – please share them in the comments.

Thanks for reading this post! Some of my other related posts include Where health and creativity intersect and The healing power of creativity.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email (your email address will be kept private and will not be spammed). You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2015 Jacquie Garton-Smith

May 10, 2015

When Mother’s Day Hurts

As it’s Mother’s Day in Australia today, I am sharing Marie Ennis-O’Connor’s deeply touching “When Mother’s Day Hurts”, which she posted on Ireland’s Mother’s Day this year and has kindly agreed to me reblogging today. Addendum: Unfortunately Marie’s 2015 & 2016 Mother’s Day posts have been taken down, but I have left my response up as I think it still has value. Other relevant posts from Marie are Missing my mother on her birthday, Coping with grief at Christmas and Grief, Loss, and the Cancer Experience.

Marie’s reflections are a poignant reminder that Mother’s Day can be a painful time for many for all kinds of reasons. Some of us will feel conflicted, celebrating one or more aspects while grieving on another.

Marie’s post also reminds me of the power of sharing stories.

Today as I pay loving tribute to the mothers in my life, I also honour my mother-in-law, who died last year, and my grandmothers, who died in 1994 and 2001. And while I celebrate the absolute good fortune of being a mother to a wonderful 14-year-old son, I well remember the difficult and painful years of subfertility and pregnancy losses.

If Mother’s Day acts as a painful reminder for you, my thoughts are also with you today.

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March 8, 2015

The different kind of excitement building for Change Day Australia 2015

There is a different kind of excitement about Change Day Australia in the count-down to 11 March 2015 than in the lead-up to the 2014 event.

Last year I felt a nervous anticipation – 2014 was the inaugural Change Day in Australia to which a smallish band of passionate people, including me, had dedicated a lot of time and effort. We have a pretty good health system in Australia in lots of ways but it absolutely can be better. Would people come on board? Change Day is all about doing something better together.

Over 15 000 wonderful pledges were lodged in 2014 in which people committed to things they could do to improve health ranging from

  • individuals committing to something that will either improve the health of others such as standing up to discriminatory behaviour, volunteering, being a role model or packing healthy lunches for their kids or for their own health, be it regular exercise, healthy diet or reframing their thinking;
  • health professionals pledging to listen, to smile, to introduce themselves, to provide training or to put the person at the centre of their care;
  • departments using it as opportunity to identify a focus or think outside the box and plan something they could achieve together;
  • big ticket items such as the Western Australian Director of Public Health pledging to develop a memorandum of understanding with the WA Health Consumers’ Council.

For Change Day 2014, I pledged to do my best to raise awareness of, and encourage participation of people in Western Australia in Change Day, and am thrilled that WA did achieve roughly 3500 pledges, approximately a quarter of the total in 2014. Many more people within WA have now heard of Change Day and lots of taken up promoting the 2015 campaign themselves with enthusiasm we could only have dreamed of last year.

2015 is shaping up to be even better, approaching 20 000 pledges from across Australia before the big day. Again the breadth of pledges is amazing.

The effort for 2015 has been more about embedding than beginning. The excitement now is palpably more confident that this is an initiative which people will increasingly embrace and with a greater impact.

What do I find most exciting about Change Day?

  • People are recognising and embracing the NEED to change.
  • People are empowered to identify and make change(s) themselves, rather than just be subject to changes made around them.
  • Change Day prompts every one of us, whether working in health or not, to think about what we could each do to improve health. Improving the health of our community is everyone’s responsibility.
  • The benefit of teams uniting to pledge together has also been highlighted by many.
  • How great are the fabulously creative ideas that people have come up with? Some even involve creativity in health (see my posts on Where health and creativity intersect and The healing power of creativity if you want to understand why this excites me).
  • The enormous cumulative potential of many people each pledging to do even just one thing – collectively we can make a huge difference.

The power of Change Day is in the simplicity. 

Just think what can be achieved if we repeat and grow Change Day Australia every year!

Personally I have found it extraordinarily rewarding to help drive something that has so much potential, to meet so many people passionate about creating opportunities for positive change in health and to learn from the creative approaches taken by others.

My Change Day Australia 2015 pledge

Jacquie Garton-Smith Change Day 2015

This year I have pledged to work with my colleagues and networks to help people with (or at significant risk of) cardiovascular and other chronic health conditions to improve the quality of their lives through better access to information, support and more options for care outside hospitals, especially towards the end of life.

It’s no small ask but for me this allows me to draw across the different positions I hold, the networks of which I am a part to do something valuable and my passion for writing. There is some scope to achieve this in different ways. Flexibility is good as how things can be best done may be not fully appreciated even knowing what the starting steps are. Once you decide what you need to do, opportunities appear. As soon as I pledged I felt enormous relief – I could now get on with doing rather than thinking about what to do or how to word it!

Over to you – I urge you to pledge now!

Big or small, easy or difficult, creative or picking up on someone else’s idea, under anonymity or with your name … Whatever works as long as it will in some way improve health.

Go on, you know it’s the right thing to do.

Have you thought about a pledge for Change Day?

If you’ve pledged – either this year or before – what have you achieved so far?

I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences – please share them in the comments.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email (your email address will be kept private and will not be spammed). You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2015 Jacquie Garton-Smith

 

November 1, 2014

My take on the “One Lovely Blog Award”

Like the lovely Melinda Tognini, whose erudite thoughts you can read at Treefall Writing and who kindly nominated me, I have decided to gratefully accept and participate in the “One Lovely Blog Award” because I like the idea of supporting other bloggers. I’ve seen a similar scheme badged under “The Versatile Blogger Award” and I’m sure there are others. Of these “awards” what I have enjoyed is seeing blogger’s recommendations of other blogs that I may not have otherwise found, many of which I have ended up following.

lovely-blog[1]

A nominated blogger who chooses to participate is asked to:

  • mention the person who made the nomination;
  • add the award logo to their post;
  • list seven things about him/herself; and
  • nominate other blogs for the award and let them know.

So in the spirit of fulfilling these requirements …

7 things about me (I’ve strived for things you most likely won’t know):

  1. Living the first five and a half years of my life in Kalgoorlie has conditioned me to hate going outside with bare feet – the ground was often blisteringly hot and not infrequently full of nasty prickles.
  2. I howled in confused terror the first time I saw rain – I was born during a drought and didn’t experience rain until we travelled to London to visit my grandparents when I was aged 2 ½ years. Paradoxically I am always comforted to hear rain on the roof now.
  3. I also vividly remember screaming at the colour TV when Playschool featured a tractor driving towards the camera that same holiday – I thought it was going to drive out of the screen. There was no television broadcast in Kalgoorlie so it was all new to me (indeed when TV came to Kal a couple of years later it was only in black & white).
  4. I adore silence when I’m alone – so good for the soul just to be rather than fill the void of an empty house with TV or radio.
  5. I am not sure if my love of dragonflies came from my love of art nouveau or if I was drawn initially to art nouveau because of all the dragonflies.
  6. One of the many things I love about Australia is the multicultural cuisine – yum! The palate has no excuse to be bored in this country.
  7. I have more grey hair in the latter half of my forties than my mother does in her seventies.

And the nominees are … a mixture of new and not-so-new bloggers. I will not be at all offended if those I nominate prefer not to accept the award. This is about sharing blogs I enjoy, not obligating anyone! My rationale is that to support emerging bloggers, established bloggers who post GREAT content should also be eligible. I think you’ll see my bent for writing, creativity and health with the huge overlap noted.

Because I am a list-freak (you possibly already know that from my bio’s) I need order and this may help you work out which are relevant for you:

Writing

  • Tips from Belinda Pollard at Small Blue Dog Publishing – one word = INVALUABLE
  • Elizabeth Spann Craig – great posts and a weekly list of twitterific links which are fab too.
  • Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn and Molly Greene – both share all manner of wonderful insider knowledge about writing and publishing.
  • Write to Done claims “Unmissable articles on writing” – close to the mark.
  • Writer Unboxed – varied and helpful posts.
  • Louise Allan  – invaluable writing posts and spot-on book reviews.
  • If Melinda Tognini hadn’t nominated me first I’d most definitely have nominated her – Treefall Writing is newer but clearly one to follow!

Creativity

  • Inspire Portal – “WISDOM, WELLNESS AND WRITING FOR CONSCIOUS CREATIVES – there’s a lot here to browse so I recommend you visit the “About” page for an explanation of the tabs – The Island, The Boat, The Beach, The Temple, The Juice Bar and The Forest …

Medical

  • Fellow GP, Dr Edwin Kruys at Doctor’s Bag taught me heaps about how doctors can blog, especially the older posts on his Social Media tab.
  • For Australian GPs: FOAM4GP – A fabulous free quality online medical education blog.

A wonderful hotchpotch of the above topics and more

  • Laura Zera mostly on travel and mental health, a blog I keep coming back to.

At first, I thought I’d struggle to think of enough, then found myself struggling to keep the list manageable. Apologies to those who didn’t make the short-list. (Addendum: blogs originally listed that no longer exist or have changed focus and are no longer useful have been deleted)

What are your thoughts on awards like these?

What great blogs have I missed?

I’d love to hear about blogs that you’d suggest are worth a visit – please share them in the comments.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email (your email address will be kept private and will not be spammed).P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email (your email address will be kept private and will not be spammed). You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2014 Jacquie Garton-Smith (updated 2020)

August 5, 2014

When push comes to shove – juggling priorities in a time-poor world

I’ve had to make a conscious choice about my writing in recent months. Write? Yes, absolutely! But I’ve needed to prioritise which writing to focus my time on. The truth is I enjoy researching and writing blog posts. But in an already tightly scheduled life, every minute I spent preparing posts was time I was stealing from work on my novels.

work-life-creative balance

“We’re all busy!” I hear you cry. Indeed we are.

“You must post on a regular schedule,” many blogs proclaim. Indeed in an ideal world that is probably true.

“Blogging will make you a better writer …” Writing regularly will make you a better writer. Variety is good and blogging is but one great way to do this. Most importantly we must be writing.

“It doesn’t take long …” I have found that depends on the topic – some fly onto the page, others need a lot more thought.

I started blogging in 2013 and my fiction writing slowed down. Dramatically. Since I’ve taken a deliberate break from blogging, I re-found my momentum. I’ve been more focused and writing with greater clarity. I’ve finished the first draft of my second work-in-progress, completed a couple of rounds of editing on my first novel and gone back to do one on my second. This stage, although exciting, requires a major investment of time and emotional energy. As for most writers, juggling writing, family, work (I have three part-time jobs all of which I love), the usual chores and a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise can be challenging. What I have come to realise is it isn’t just about the time. It is also about the mental space to develop ideas and let them percolate; to process and, at times, stand back to gain perspective. To recharge the emotional energy bank. And to deal with the other challenges that life throws our way, especially if prone to be more of an intuitive type. Sometimes we just need to say “Enough!” I applaud you if you are doing it all and managing well and I thank those of you who have shared that you couldn’t. I came to the point that I had to accept my own limitations. As a GP, I’m constantly talking up work-life balance. Writing is a tricky one because it is as much a passion as an occupation. So maybe it’s more of a work-life-creative balance. If the need to prioritise strikes a chord, how might you do so?

  • What must you do? These are things that have to be given your attention (warning: do not let negotiable items slip in here). I put them at the top because I know they distract me if I don’t work out a plan to do them. Sometimes it’s best to do them asap to liberate yourself, otherwise scheduling time to do them later can free you to fit in regular time for other pursuits …
  • What do you most want to do? You may know immediately or you may have to reflect on this. There can be more than one but it can’t be everything … anything that isn’t a burning desire should go into the next category.
  • What’s negotiable? Being a fan of writing down what I need/want to get done to release them from my brain without fear of forgetting, I usually have a longish list. Sometimes something gets to promoted to one of the categories above, others slowly get ploughed through when I have a free minute, am too tired to write or need a short break from something else. They do get done but in my own time and not in competition with the more important items.
  • What you have achieved? Acknowledging what you have done is energising. Even crossing something off a list is satisfying, or even better, starting a new list because one has most items completed. Big achievements need even more celebration.
  • REVIEW your priorities regularly. You can shuffle them and sometimes they need adjustment to meet life’s demands.

Why am I writing a post now?  I’ve come to a natural hiatus, needing to take a step back for some distance before more editing and with ideas for my next novel gestating (yep you guessed it – in the form of a list of ideas!). Writing this popped up in my most-want-to-do category this week and here we are …

How about you? Have you had to prioritise your creativity?

What happened? What did you find useful?

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2014 Jacquie Garton-Smith

February 23, 2014

A Better Death

Having the best life we can is something many of us desire and work towards. How we, or our loved ones, can die as well as possible is something many think less about.

A month ago we lost a very dear family member to heart failure. It is hard to write about still. In truth I have found it hard to write at all over recent weeks. However there is so much to learn from everything that happens and there are some positives to share from this experience which may help others.

My mother-in-law Chris was an incredible woman. She was one of the kindest people I have ever met. She hadn’t had an easy life, but she faced both life and her impending death with grace, courage and acceptance.

A rose by any other name

This post is a tribute to how she handled the situation she found herself in, but there are three key elements that allowed her to do so:

1. Information.

The cardiologist communicated very clearly about her prognosis and, to the best of his knowledge, what she could expect at diagnosis and all along. It was a shock for Chris at first, but it was the start of her coming to terms with her shortened life expectancy and to consider and communicate her wishes. As her condition became end-stage, she was not surprised and had most things put in place.

2. Palliative Care.

As a family we had experienced together how much palliative care can help in the past and Chris welcomed a timely referral. Palliative care is not just for cancer. There is much available to assist people with end of life chronic disease. The combination of expert care to help ease unpleasant symptoms, in this case particularly severe breathlessness, and the mobilisation of extra help at home made a huge difference to her quality of life over her final few months. It also allowed us to spend more quality time with her, as she was more comfortable and able to do a little more than she would have without treatment.

3. An Advance Health Directive.

The benefits of making an Advance Health Directive or a “living will” were at least two-fold. Firstly, her wishes were clearly articulated and helped us as her family understand what she wanted. Secondly when she had an unexpected sudden turn and an ambulance was called, the paramedics were given the Directive as soon as they came and were able to act in line with her wishes, as legally obliged to do so. There was no grey area. Without it, she may have been given CPR and carted off to hospital, both of which she explicitly did not want.

Our loss is still painful. We each regret that she had to die and we all miss her terribly. Because she had a sudden deterioration on the background of a slower decline, we didn’t get to say good-bye in the way we might have liked. But we can grieve knowing that she knew and had accepted that her life was ending and that the way she died was as she had expressed she wanted – peacefully at home, dignified with a minimum of fuss and with a quick final departure.

The key lessons to achieving a better death from our experience:

  • I encourage everybody to be open to having conversations around death. What may seem uncomfortable for some can bring enormous comfort.
  • In addition to this, I ask my colleagues in the health professions to clearly communicate, to offer early referral to palliative care and to provide information about Advance Health Directives (or your equivalent).

Would you like to share anything about your experience of losing a loved one?

What did, or could have, made the journey better?

You also may find inspiration from my posts on Imagine yourself in someone else’s hospital bed (or chair), The best cuppa ever about kindness or an earlier exploration of Where health and creativity intersect.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2014 Jacquie Garton-Smith 

(updated 4 May 2014)

January 11, 2014

Is excitement a new strategy for writers?

I have been intrigued by posts recently about the study Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement by Alison Wood Brooks.

Brooks identified that most people try to calm down to handle their performance anxiety and contrasted this with asking participants to ‘reappraise their anxiety as excitement’ by either stating “I am excited” or encouraging them to get excited. Experimental studies were conducted across karaoke singing, public speaking and maths performances and found that although the subjective symptoms of anxiety did not lessen, individuals who reappraised their anxiety as excitement improved their performance on independent assessment. Not just talked to themselves differently, but also did better.

This piqued my interest and got me to wondering (as I yet again vacillated about my scheduled writing task), do I suffer from performance anxiety around my writing and may this help? I love writing but like many of us find, sometimes the words flow delightfully easily once I get started and other times I can sit in front of an open document and struggle to get even a single word out. Getting started is often key. When I avoid my desk or when the words don’t flow, could a level of anxiety be underlying my hesitation even if I feel relatively calm? I do think attitude makes a difference but how is that shifted? Once you get ‘on a roll’ certainly excitement seems to be a self-propelling force.

Of course I then had to google (instead of write) and indeed I found a search on ‘performance anxiety writing’ (also writers/writer’s block) returned some interesting reading.

Opinion varies between the stance that ALL writer’s block is due to performance anxiety through to the two being completely different beasts. After considering the posts I read, my own experience and those of my creative friends, my take is that performance anxiety IS a real and probably quite frequent contributor but not the only cause. When I am simply too tired or distracted by a major event, my writer’s block isn’t always caused by performance anxiety. I strongly believe I need to show up to write but I also know there are times which aren’t conducive and sometimes I need a break too.

There also ensued a wide and sometimes contradictory range of strategies to deal with either/both, often in combination. There was a lot of overlap so I haven’t referenced them but broadly they include:

  • Set a deadline(s);
  • Set an achievable goal eg just write for one hour or x many words;
  • Commit yourself to write;
  • Schedule or quarantine time ;
  • Have a routine;
  • Be flexible;
  • Take a break;
  • Try to force yourself NOT to write;
  • Do something else creative;
  • Plan what you will write – from sketching out that day’s writing to the complete body of work;
  • Stream of consciousness/ free flow writing;
  • Writing exercises;
  • Write anything;
  • Eliminate distractions;
  • Set yourself free – Write for yourself and don’t worry about what others think (personally I think this is essential for a first draft to let your true voice develop);
  • Acknowledge it may not be your best material but just get something down;
  • Positive affirmations (e.g. “I am a writer”); and
  • Examine your issues/blocks.

Yup, it’s a long list, probably incomplete, with a number of opposites. Obviously different things work for different people. Interestingly none suggested feigning excitement… If excitement was mentioned, it was around how exciting it is to overcome writer’s block.

So what the hell, I thought, let’s give it a go… I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I sat down and told myself that I was excited to have found the time to write. That much at least was true. “I am excited,” I thought.

And in my highly scientific (not!) experiment with a sample of one, it worked. I couldn’t stop myself when the time came to do something else and I finished feeling genuinely excited by what I had achieved.

But acknowledging the bias that I was perhaps excited to have found a topic that inspired me more than some of the others I was considering, I decided to hold off publishing this post in order to try it again, this time on my Work in Progress, a novel.

I felt a little more confident starting as I had made a few notes around where I thought I might take it as they had occurred to me since I last wrote. Surprisingly I went to a completely different place in the story. When I stalled or after I was interrupted I reminded myself that I was excited and pushed on. I don’t know if this might have happened anyway nor do I have an independent assessor to tell me if I performed better but I feel that I did. My new mind-set on trial was a significant change. It felt like a powerful strategy to call up.

My experiences concurred with the study’s practical implications as Brooks describes:

“My findings demonstrate the profound control and influence we have over our own emotions. The way we verbalize and think about our feelings helps to construct the way we actually feel. Saying “I am excited” represents a simple, minimal intervention that can be used quickly and easily to prime an opportunity mind-set and improve performance.”

I know I’ll be approaching my writing with more excited thinking in future. Even if an idea isn’t bubbling I can create excitement around just making the time, and I hope the results are… exciting.

As Brooks indicates, there are many opportunities for further research. It is such a simple strategy and I think it would be fascinating to see if it translates to increased success when handling any confronting situation or change, be it thrust upon you or a choice. Perhaps tackling a new job, stopping smoking (or another habit), starting an exercise program, changing to a healthier diet or possibly any task about which we hesitate.

Have you ever tried telling yourself that you are excited to overcome your writer’s block and/or performance anxiety?

If you have (or you are willing to test it out now,) how did it go?

I’d love to hear how you get on. Actually I’m keen to know your thoughts on anything related to writer’s block and/or performance anxiety!

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email (your email address will be kept private and will not be spammed). You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2014 Jacquie Garton-Smith (Image Copyright: Vector Image by StockUnlimited)

Copyright: Vector Image by StockUnlimited
December 19, 2013

Imagine yourself in someone else’s hospital bed (or chair)

Copyright: <a href='http://www.stockunlimited.com'>Vector Image by StockUnlimited</a>

Have you been in hospital before? What was it like? If you haven’t, spend a moment thinking about how it must feel.

Hospitals are scary places for a lot of people. A person who is normally confident in their home or work environment may feel completely un-empowered. Add pain or other unpleasant symptoms, boredom, constant noise, stress about what is wrong and whether you will recover and to what condition, inadequate information, lack of continuity in staff, and we have a potentially volatile situation.

Now imagine being sleep deprived, extremely unwell, very young or very old, being isolated from your loved ones, not fluent in the language spoken (and that’s before you get to the medical jargon), confused and/or not able to communicate clearly for some other reason.

Even those of us who work in healthcare often feel powerless and frustrated when it is our turn to be patients or a relative of one. I can only guess how intimidating it must be when the hospital is an even more foreign environment.

I have recently spent a bit of time bedside in hospitals and at doctor’s appointments with relatives and it has caused me to pause for reflection. At the same time I have seen a groundswell of health professionals and others wanting to do better. Positive change doesn’t have to cost a lot nor take a lot of time.

 

My challenge to health professionals and other staff is to try to imagine what it is like to be the person in front of you and to try make their visit a little easier for them. You may not be able to walk in their shoes, or lie in their hospital bed, but try to visualise what they might be going through.

6 simple steps to better know and help our patients:

1. Introduce yourself by full name and position the first time you meet anyone (ie the patient or their relative) – #hellomynameis.

2. Make eye contact.  I know it is so obvious but I have seen people deliberately avoid doing so. An excellent way to make someone feel worthless.

3. Spend time getting to know a little about your patient and their family, especially their carer(s). In General Practice we often get to know our patients much better (and usually in their more natural state). You may not have the length of relationship in hospitals but you may be surprised to find out something more about the hospital-pyjama clad individual you are attending and help you work with them to better health. Who are they in their real life? What interests them? Is the man of few words in front of you running a multi-million dollar business? (I joke not!) Or a concert pianist? Or scared because his Dad had a heart attack at his age? Is the glum lady who looks ready to bolt terrified because her family who have come down to the big smoke to go into hospital never come home? Or is she worried about who is looking after her dog while she’s in here? Does she have a gorgeous sense of humour once she trusts you? It may help you to understand better where they are coming from, what they fear, what they understand and what they still need to know.

4. Explain. In language your patient can understand. Get an interpreter if needed. Information truly is helpful. We know only a proportion is taken in especially when bad news is delivered or someone is under a lot of stress or very unwell, so check their understanding and be prepared to have to explain some key things again.

5. Allow time for questions. Every visit. What you think your patient will be worried about is not necessarily what they want to know.

6. Visit regularly, especially when you have said you will (and apologise if you have been delayed). Your patient knows you are busy but is almost certainly hanging out for every review and update.

We don’t have to be health professionals to make changes to improve health. Anyone and everyone can do something (or many things) to help the health and wellbeing of others.

While I was studying, I worked for a family-owned department store in Perth called Aherns who trained their staff to, amongst other things, chat freely with the elderly people who came through the shop if they had time. The managers explained that they recognised that for many it was a rare social outing and for some, the only conversation they might have that day. Thirty years after my training with Aherns I still remember this. I still think my six years working with them gave me a better foundation in communication and dealing with people than my medical degree and subsequent studies did.

I have recently been made aware of the HUSH Music Foundation and would like to applaud Dr Catherine Crock and every contributor for their efforts to make hospitals more relaxing through music. I’d love to see this rolled out elsewhere. I’m sure there are other great examples and would love to hear about them.

We may not all have that kind of creative talent, but don’t underestimate the value of smiling in the lift, helping with directions or introducing yourself to the person next to the one you are visiting and asking if they need anything while you are picking up a paper for your loved one.

What have been your experiences with the health system?

What would you most like to change about health care?

What can you do to make a difference for someone else?

You may find inspiration from my last post on kindness or an earlier exploration of health and creativity.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

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Disclaimer

© 2013 Jacquie Garton-Smith (Cartoon Copyright: Vector Image by StockUnlimited)

(updated 13 April 2016)

December 5, 2013

The best cuppa ever

I have been reflecting on the importance of kindness recently. What strikes me is that acts of kindness can be random or intentional, big or small, but even the small ones can make a huge difference.

One stands out for me many years after it occurred.

When I was a junior doctor working at a large tertiary hospital, a number of the rotations required us to do overnight ward cover. These could be gruelling, particularly covering medical specialities where you would be the only doctor in the hospital looking after some seriously unwell people with very complex conditions on a number of different wards all over the site. You can’t plan the work to any great degree as the job is to respond to things that come up and need urgent attention. Weekend nights could be especially tough as the usual medical teams often hadn’t been in to review their patients during the day.

Sometimes I have nightmares that I am on overnight ward cover again, well over two decades later.

It was working one of these shifts on a Sunday night that I had a list of tasks longer than anything I had ever imagined. I was dashing up and down stairs (the lifts being archaically slow) trying to get at least the most urgent jobs taken care of before the next calls came in. Around 4am I headed back the Renal ward to review a patient with kidney failure who had developed a high fever and needed assessment, blood tests and treatment started asap.

I had a number of other equally unwell patients and didn’t know if I could physically get to do all the things I had been called to do over the remaining four hours of my shift. Despite being a hard worker and relatively efficient, I felt ill with the sheer pressure of the workload.

Having seen the patient, I only had moments to sit down to complete the paperwork. As I sat down, one of the ward nurses appeared with a mug of tea in her hand. I think my eyes may have become teary as she put it down in front of me and said, ‘You look like you need this.’

Mug and medical equipment 3

It cost her only a few minutes of her time but it made all the difference. Even though it was ordinary hospital tea it tasted incredible. It did recharge me, not just from the sustenance, but from the fact that someone cared enough to both notice that I was exhausted and overwhelmed and to do something to try to alleviate how I was feeling. Even in the healthcare industry, we could do more to look out for each other.

I can still see her face but I can’t remember her name. I don’t know if she has any idea how much her kindness helped me that night.

This humbling act of thoughtfulness stems from the deeper well of kindness that, when demonstrated, helps individuals and communities. Kindness helps bring out the best in us, be it in family or friends, a co-worker or co-creative, an acquaintance in person or online, or someone you don’t know. We won’t always know that our kindness has been appreciated but it is worth doing anyway.

How has an act of kindness made a difference to you?

How can you make a difference to someone else by being kind?

Do you have a good “cuppa” story?

 

Looking after others should be core for health professionals but we don’t always look after our patients, our colleagues or ourselves as well as we could. We don’t have to be health professionals to make changes to improve health. Anyone and everyone can to something (or many things) to help the health and wellbeing of others.

I see a lot of kindness in the creative community as well as in the health industry. I thank you for the kindness that you have shown me.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. Although I am confident I can attribute the benefit to the kindness rather than the chemical effects of the tea, here’s an interesting article by Jeremy Dean on Tea: 6 Brilliant Effects on the Brain.

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Disclaimer

© 2013 Jacquie Garton-Smith

November 20, 2013

The healing power of creativity

The research demonstrating the health benefits of being creative was touched upon in my last post. We could continue to talk science but for me it is very personal story.

During the mid to late 1990s, my family experienced the losses of a number of loved ones mostly due to cancer. I was lucky in lots of ways. I have a loving husband and family. I had a few years of my career as a doctor under my belt, I worked with people who were supportive and I had worked previously with a palliative care team. I was well-armed to process information about what was happening and to help my family. It did get me to wondering how people manage to navigate the health system without a health professional background but perhaps that’s a topic for another time.

wings-2-edited

Photo by Mia Holton

I ran between work, which I still found rewarding, and my role as a caring relative, always wishing I had found more time to spend with my loved one before they got sick. As each illness took its course, both difficult and precious times were shared, everybody made a significant contribution and we were brought closer as a family.

Life goes on. You pull yourself together and do the needful. Days and then weeks and months pass in a blur. But grieving is painful and I couldn’t stay numb forever. In the dark days that followed one of our losses, a dear and wise friend Dionne Lew suggested that I write and told me about “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. I was surprised that she even thought of me as a writer as I had focused so completely on my career that I had not written fiction since high school. In fact, I had read few novels since school as all my reading time was spent on medical journals.

I took her advice and wrote, at first tentatively, and gradually found that I got my right arm and my life back. Allowing myself to write let me process things differently, even when I was writing fiction. I strongly believe that when you write, you won’t go anywhere that you aren’t ready to go. Writing helped me to move on. I am also fascinated by how reading fiction, which is something I now do regularly, can help us to access our emotions, learn and better understand ourselves in a way that direct examination of our own lives might not allow. And the benefits don’t end with the written word. I also found that I enjoy painting and have found gardening to be another creative outlet.

Interestingly over the last decade I have noticed that when I don’t find the time for creative writing, I suffer terrifying nightmares. Not the kind of things I want to share or would ever write about even in fiction. It is like the creative urge is coiled up somewhere in my subconscious and needs to be given an opportunity to come out. I trudge back to my computer, start typing and they stop.

How has being creative helped you?

What are the consequences for you if you are not creative?

How you might make a change that promotes creativity and health?

I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to share your thoughts on creativity and health.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on  Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

Disclaimer

© 2013 Jacquie Garton-Smith  (Photo by Mia Holton)