Voices in Humanism

Beth Steinberg, PhD(c), MS, RN, NEA-BC
Wexner Medical Center

“I knew I had to help”

Breath shortens. Joy diminishes. Worry ensues. Tension heightens. Sleep is interrupted. Appetite changes. The results are ill health.

While working as a bedside nurse, raising kids, going to graduate school, that feeling of being overwhelmed would strike and she took action to handle the emotions. She did breath work, yoga, and cleared her mind to calm herself.

Later as a nurse manager, director and then nurse administrator, she saw the stress levels of the nurses in her charge, and she said, “I knew I had to do something. I knew I had to help.” Noticing what the pressures were doing to the mental health of those in her charge is a bit like reading the stars to navigate; she knew what to look for and helped guide the nurses in ways to relax.

Beth Steinberg continues her own mindfulness and yoga practices as she plans, develops, implements, and researches programs that improve health through stress reduction at the Ohio State University Medical Center, while working with the Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative, the Employee Resource Center, and Buckeye Paws, which is a therapy dog program for staff.

She employed the techniques she has practiced for years this very morning to prepare for a complex project. “I took a step back. Put down the work. Breathed. Cleared my mind. Then returned to the task,” she said.

“What the research shows is that methods such as yoga, breath work, and mindfulness training dramatically reduce stress, increase productivity and have positive effects on health conditions such as chronic pain, cancer, and cardiovascular disease,” Beth said. “We wanted to bring this right into the work place so that people could take just a few minutes to relax. We did it and have shown it has a real return on investment in terms of staff health and well-being.”

It was important for Beth that the programming be available at work as the energy spent during the shift left little reserve for efforts before or after. What may seem like a waste of precious work time to some has proven to actually save money by creating healthier professionals providing better care for patients.

With the Mindfulness in Motion program, inter-professional cohorts come together to learn the calming strategies. “We have doctors, and housekeepers, nurses, and respiratory therapists together. They relax and they learn from each other. The results are personal, but also enhance collaboration at the bedside,” Beth said.

The medical field deals with stress daily, but with the advent of COVID-19, the desperately ill patients and burnout symptoms surged.

Beth does not wait for disaster to render staff decimated. She keeps her antennae up to anticipate how she and the programming can circumvent trouble. She talks to people, asks questions, and finds solutions.

She observed how in the beginning of the pandemic, adrenaline and the work at hand kept everyone barreling through. She understood that level of exertion could not be sustained.

This is what she concluded. “After 10, 11 months, the exhaustion set in and people were working on their last fumes of energy. The toll mounted from working 16-hour shifts, dealing with PPE, people refusing to wear masks or believing COVID was not real, becoming not only a nurse but a caregiver, chaplain, and holding an iPad for final goodbyes.”

The need for programming was fast becoming a staff medical emergency and was met with a number of resources, one being the website WELLNESS TAB where two, five, and ten minute guided exercises can be employed.

For instance, the two-minute program includes receiving instructions for progressive relaxation of body parts. Beth said, “Sometimes we don’t even realize the extreme tension in our necks or backs. Also, we have lost the physical comfort of being able to gather or hug. On top of that toll, our personal lives may have been complicated with loss of loved ones and added responsibilities. In just a few minutes we can reset and build
our stamina.”

Brienne, Beth’s yellow lab, is a member of the Buckeye Paws staff therapy dog team. The well-trained dogs wear a grey harness with an OSU patch and they sport their ID credentials. The therapy dogs have been given medical clearance to provide important good health interventions, hugs and tail wags.

Hunter Jeffries, RN, BSN, CCRN, a nurse manager in the Medical Intensive Care Unit, uses a technique that Beth finds extremely therapeutic. She said, “Hunter really knows how to connect with people, to celebrate and recognize their specific accomplishments.”

Hunter recently sent an email to staff about a not particularly funny procedure: how to inflate a rectal tube properly. Beth described the email as both informative and also light-hearted and clever. She said she could not help but smile as she read it. She also described the virtual retirement plans Hunter is meticulously forming for a colleague and his admirable dedication while also having a young family at home. She sees
Hunter as a living example of resilience fostered by his care and concern for others.

Because Beth keeps an eye on the horizon, she knows that when the rush and work load of the pandemic eases there will be a let down and new measures must be taken.

“What we will see,” she said, “is people feeling a sense of loss of purpose. We need to consider ways for people to find joy in their work again. We have the data that our website and mindfulness activity tabs are reaching thousands. One of our goals coming very soon is using storytelling to offer meaning and understanding to our experiences.”

Beth’s passion is to help staff weather life and work’s often stormy seas. In nautical terms, she is a true navigator who manages the “point of sail” (the craft’s direction of travel in relation to true wind direction) to propel people forward in a healthy manner. She is in alignment with the words of Thomas Monson, a religious leader, who said, “We cannot control the wind, but we can adjust our sails.”

Patricia Wynn Brown
Writer and Performer
Medicine and the Arts Board
Author: ESSENTIAL STORIES: Medicine During COVID-19 and the Lives of Practitioners at the OSU Wexner Medical Center