Let’s redress negative bias. What are you grateful for at work today?
Work takes up much of our time. Yet if we are to believe some polls, up to 85% of people are unhappy in their jobs. Being unsatisfied in an area that we commit so much of our lives inevitably affects our wellbeing more generally. Our work is often intrinsically linked to our identity.
We know that in our field of healthcare, for many the reality of working in a stressful, underfunded environment in which providing the level of care we would like is a daily struggle, is a far cry from the vision portrayed when applying to medical school. One solution can be to make sure we ensure there are strict boundaries between our work and other aspects of our life. This remains suboptimal though; we still spend many hours at work! One problem is that we often lose sight as to why we went into a specific job in the first place, or previous aspects of a job that we may have enjoyed. However, if we look hard enough we can still identify some of those things, and we can also find ways to nurture them. Gratitude practice can help…
As the Covid-19 pandemic started to rear its head there was a huge amount of anxiety and uncertainty facing the NHS and its staff. As general practitioners, we were unsure how we were going to manage the increasing demand for appointments related to covid. How would we manage the large numbers of patients deemed unfit for hospital care and needing care in the community? It’s easy to forget now, but at the time we had no idea how high the mortality rate would be. Not only were we concerned for our patients, we were concerned for our loved ones. How could we manage the risk of bringing covid back into our homes? We were not unique. People across all sectors of work found their working lives turned upside down, and many of the coping mechanisms we might have to combat stress; such as meeting with friends and family, or going on holiday, were no longer available to us.
The stress for us was manifest in a way we're sure it did for many. Days were filled with discussions about struggles. We would ruminate upon what wasn't working and how stressful things were. Many of these discussions were grounded in genuine concerns regarding the issues we were facing. No one should deny the impact of the pandemic on all of our wellbeing. However, these negative thoughts at times became all encompassing.
There is strong evidence that there is a tendency for us all to have a negative cognitive bias. For example, if people are asked to recall a recent emotional event they are much more likely to report a negative one than positive one. Neuroscientists have identified that rate at which we blink correlates with the degree of cognitive activity. In one study, participants had a much higher blink rate when shown negative words compared to positive. We thus more readily identify negative stimuli and are more likely to dwell on them. It’s no surprise that this is exactly what happened when there were so many negatives to endure in the midst of a global pandemic.
We decided to do something however to redress that negative bias. Rather than our usual spiraling moan at the end of the clinic, we instead tried to identify one or two things that had gone well and that we were grateful for. At the end of each clinic we made this the first thing that we did. It wasn’t always easy. But there was always something:
The grateful elderly lady who we were able to refer to occupational therapy so that she could continue to live independently in her home (and the occupational therapist who did the assessment)
The child who made us laugh coming in smeared with chocolate around his face
The depressed patient who all we felt we’d done is listen to, but thanked us at the end of the consult and said they felt a bit better
The consultant who promptly gave expert advice which avoided needing to send a patient to the emergency department
The receptionist who did an ‘emergency’ run for cake at the local supermarket
Finding out we were right to order the rare blood test for a patient last week and thanks to the lab turning it around quickly the patient can now get the treatment they need
As time progressed it became easier and easier to identify something to be grateful for. It wasn’t long before we began to notice some benefits to our wellbeing. The days did seem that little bit easier, sleep improved, our mood was better. This is not surprising. There is evidence that gratitude practice has a positive impact on sleep. In one study by Robert Emmons showed that participants who kept a gratitude diary slept 30 mins longer and had better quality sleep compared to a control group who didn't. Some studies have also looked at how our physiology is impacted by gratitude practice, with one showing a 23% reduction in cortisol (a hormone related to stress). Of course there were still difficult times, and of course the cognitive shift didn’t take away the immense suffering caused by the pandemic, but it certainly helped us.
More widely there had been a trend at the peak of the pandemic for gratitude to be at the forefront of many people’s minds. Having many things we had taken for granted being stripped away did force us to think about what we are truly grateful for. As, the political drive at least, moves to thoughts of life ‘post’ pandemic it’s important we do not lose some of the lessons learnt from such a difficult period. Our post clinic routine of identifying a few things that went well that we are grateful for has now been non negotiable for us for a number of years. In fact, it kickstarted a bigger journey. We now use our clinical experience of helping patients suffering from stress at work and our research into gratitude practice to help organizations build sustainable change. We love helping to grow a culture of gratitude workplaces and see teams discover the many benefits it can bring.
What have you been grateful for at work today?