Healing with Heart from Moss Communications

Practicing Thanks- Giving on Thanksgiving Day

Having an attitude of gratitude is a steady theme in the book, Healing with Heart: Inspirations for Health Care Professionals. Healing with Heart, put out by Moss Communications, is a practical tool that everyone in health care can use to restore their passion for their work and appreciate the talents and contributions that their coworkers make every day. Whether you work directly with patients, or support those who do, Healing with Heart addresses the true team effort required to deliver quality patent care.

In the reflection, Practicing Thanks-Giving on Thanksgiving Day, Healing with Heart offers practical ways to express gratitude to the many unsung heroes who are our coworkers. Here is an excerpt from this reflection:
 

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. Most of us are aware of our blessings, be they within our families, country or the work place. Within our differing traditions, we express our appreciation in prayerful ways.

This is also the time of year to turn to one another as physicians and employees to express our gratitude. Many of us in direct clinical care and administration, often hear words of appreciation, but those who work in supportive roles often do not. We need to change that and go out of our way to thank those who are overlooked. We know who they are.

Here are some suggestions. Express a kind word to those who:
 

• Carry hammers, pull cable, and open clogged drains.

• Remove scuff marks and polish the floors during night hours.

• Work in labs and draw blood for hours on end.

• Care for Alzheimer patients.

• Stand at the same table in the kitchen day after day, never seeing a patient, yet expertly slicing box-loads of vegetables.

• Counsel the psychiatric and addicted patients.

• Spend days in cubicles focusing on codes and bills.

• Process our pay and cut checks for vendors.

• Volunteer their time and talent giving directions in the lobby.

• Track quality measures in never-seen offices.

• Work as office assistants in hospitals, treatment centers, or in off-campus business offices.

• Upgrade our computers.

• Clean lavatories.

• Staff our physician office practices (even though we only know them by their voices).

• Sweep the grounds and plow the snow.

• Connect thousands of patients by phone to their families.

• Operate the coffee carts.

• Serve as ambulance crews.

• Purchase supplies.

These are the people who make a hospital thrive...