It is with pleasure and relief that I bid goodbye to 2021-a year fraught with more difficulties than any in memory-disease, death, disinformation, divisiveness, violence, and ravaging weather. The pain and lessons of 2021 and the unpredictability of the future have dampened my efforts to develop New Year's resolutions. Instead, on tiptoe, I offer a few guidelines to muddle through 2022:
Guideline 1: Mine 2021's lessons to prepare for the next inevitable disaster. Pose the hard questions to the leadership in your institutions about staff sufficiency, support strategies, and equipment stockpiles. Encourage, even press, for a widely disseminated workplace plan designed to manage the next catastrophe that is sure to come. And if you are in a leadership position, take the initiative.
Guideline 2: Rely on scientific sources for information on health and illness issues. Learn what makes sources "scientific" and know that science will interpret and debate its own findings until there is consensus. Sounds messy and confusing, but that is the way it works. The answers are in the data, not in crackpot theories that appear in social media or are promulgated by fringe groups. Be patient with those searching for answers; after all, they did produce revolutionary vaccines in record time.
Guideline 3: Get clear on the difference between "misinformation" and "disinformation." Misinformation is false or wrong information unrelated to intent to deceive. If you have reservations or questions, talk to experts, read the scientific literature, and pursue relevant facts. Disinformation is the intentional use of misinformation to manipulate, persuade, harm, frighten, or control.1 Don't be fooled, know the differences.
Guideline 4: Be kind, calm, and clear when making the case for health, safety, and self-care. Use data and analogies to persuade. For example, a neighbor, also a nurse, approached me about the mandatory vaccination rule imposed at her workplace. "Do you agree with this imposition on my freedom! she railed, "So many of the staff are so upset and I am confused." I asked whether she wore a seat belt and drove between the lane lines on her trip to work. "Of course. It's the law and I don't want to be injured or injure anyone else on the road." I replied, "That might be the same principle your workplace is applying." Three days later she let me know that she had an appointment to get the vaccine and that she had used my analogy with coworkers. Persuasion does not always work, but delivered calmly and with good intentions, it is worth a try.
Guideline 5: Embrace self-care-determine what you need, develop a plan, and practice self-care modalities regularly and then spread the word. If you are a nurse educator, advocate for self-care and stress management content in the nursing curriculum. The pandemic has not only exacted an enormous toll on nurses but also highlighted society's dependency on nurses to be there in the worst possible times and under the most difficult conditions. Hopefully, we will recruit new nurses into a profession that promotes self-care and resilience.
While awaiting execution in the Tower of London in 1535, St Thomas More wrote this prayer. Hang it on your wall and let it be your guide in 2022.
Prayer for Good Humor2
by St Thomas More
Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.
Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it.
Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn't frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.
Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress because of that obstructing thing called "I."
Grant me, O Lord, a good sense of humor.
Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke, to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others.
On behalf of the Editorial Board, I wish our readers and all nurses, the happiest New Year possible.
-Gloria F. Donnelly, PhD, RN, FAAN, FCPP
Editor in Chief
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