EP 69: CPR for the Soul: Compassion, Presence, and Recovery in Nursing

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Dr. Renee Thompson:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Dr. Renee Thompson.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Coffee Break podcast. This is actually our first recorded podcast in 2025, so this is the first time 2025 I'm sitting here having a coffee chat with an amazing guest, and I'm really optimistic about 2025, and I hope you are, too. So I have some questions for you. Do you ever wake up in the morning feeling overwhelmed before you even start your day? Check. Okay. Do you deal with change and uncertainty, or stress in an unhealthy way? Check. Do you crave more focus, more calm, and joy in your life? All right, that's a check for me. Well, if you answered yes to any of these, you'll be glad that you're here. If you answered no, well, you might be in denial. So I'm really excited to invite to our podcast today Diane Sieg, who is just an amazing human being who's going to actually talk to us about achieving well-being in the nursing profession with self-leadership. Diane, welcome to the show.

Diane Sieg:
Thank you. Renee, I'm thrilled to be here with you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Gosh, I've known Diane for, I don't know how many years now. 5? 4, 5 years?

Diane Sieg:
Oh, at least. I think more.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah. And I love anytime we're at a conference, and I get to see you. And I know we attend a lot of the same conferences, but I want to tell you a little bit more about Diane. She's worked as an emergency room nurse in hospitals across the country for more than 23 years. She's been speaking, training, and coaching nurses and nurse leaders for the last 28 years. She's the author of two books, Stop Living Life Like an Emergency and 30 Days to Grace, and she is currently working on her third book based on her highly successful well-being coaching initiative. I didn't know you were working on a third book.

Diane Sieg:
Yeah, I am.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my God, so exciting! I cannot wait to read it. So, Diane, this whole podcast is about cultivating a healthy work culture, and we address bullying and Bullying and incivility. That's what we're known for. And it requires leaders who are knowledgeable, equipped, skilled with everything that they need to do that. But what we find is that sometimes these leaders are just not capable of addressing issues in their departments because they're also so burnt out and they're not taking care of themselves. And I know this is your world. And I wanted to first talk to you about mentioned self-leadership. What does that mean? Because I've actually seen that out there. Like leaders need self-leadership. So, from your perspective, Diane, what does that mean?

Diane Sieg:
It's about making the best decision for yourself, no matter what area of nursing or level of leadership that you are in. How do I make the best decision for myself so that I feel good? I feel good about what I do every day. I feel good about myself. I feel I just feel good physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And you and I know, Renee, that nurses are great at directing and innovating and rescuing and fixing everybody else. We know what to do. We can tell everybody else what to do, but we don't do it ourselves. So it's not just knowing it, it's actually doing it. And of course, nursing leadership today, more than ever, they have this opportunity to model this model and support. Of course, it takes both, right? Actions always speak louder than words, and to actually support their nurses, their leaders, and all the way down to the bedside nurse and clinicians to do the same for themselves, to support the best decision.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I know you do a lot of coaching. Okay. A lot of leadership coaching. Can you give us perhaps some examples of maybe what leaders do right now under that umbrella of self-leadership? So it's making decisions and feeling good about them. Can you give us any examples from maybe some of your clients who have done this well? And I'm imagining they didn't start out doing these things well, but you were able to help them to come up with, okay, these are some things that I'm going to incorporate into my daily practice that are going to help me to make better decisions so that I can feel good at the end of the day about what I've done at work, and maybe I can feel good at the end of the evening because of maybe how I showed up at home. So, can you give us some, like, practical examples of what leaders do under that umbrella of self-leadership?

Diane Sieg:
Yeah, of course, and it's really simple. It's not complicated. We make it complicated, but it's so simple. So what this requires that, first and foremost, is leaders and nurses, just in general, are making a generalization. We are overachievers. We are high producing. We are sometimes Type-A like control and we also think we never do enough, that we just think there's more and more is better, and we got to do it faster. And of course, with the changing climate of healthcare today, continuous transition continuous and keep it super simple CPR, compassion, presence, and recovery. So compassion now nurses as a profession, we're all compassionate, but we don't have compassion for ourselves. Yeah. So that is where we start. Is being kind to ourselves, not being so hard on ourselves, not having this negative inner critic that says, why didn't you do that? Why didn't you do that? Why didn't you speak up? You should have done this better. You got to do more. That constant. I know this sounds familiar, Renee.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my God. … Trash.

Diane Sieg:
There you go.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And I'm the queen of head trash. I'm always mentally beating myself up, or I didn't handle that meeting well, or I should have done this better. Or I said I was going to get all these things done today, and I didn't get half of them. And then I remember people like you who I've learned from, and I've had coaches, and I have a coach right now. And I would think, what would David say? What would Diane say to me if they heard the head trash? And they would say, knock it off. Give yourself some grace, okay? And you're so right, though we beat ourselves up.

Diane Sieg:
It doesn't help. See, this is the thing I figured out a long time ago. Not that I, this is a practice. It's not perfection. I don't have this down all the time. All these things I need. I continue to practice myself. But it doesn't help because it keeps us focused on the wrong thing. We're focused on what's already happened, not what is happening right now. And we can't do anything about what's already happening, right? We can only do something about the here and now, which goes into presence. And presence requires us to slow down. We're all running as fast. We can't trying to catch up, which is a lie. No, we're not going to catch up. It's never done. We don't want it to be done. So, about slowing down and being in the moment and mindfulness has been it's been such a big topic for the last, oh well for hundreds of years, but especially the last ten. But we've got to be more present, and then we move on to the next. So we're in such a rush now. I worked in the area for 23 years. There are so many emergencies, but 99%, even in the emergency department, are not life and death. But we run our course. We run our lives like it's an emergency. So slowing down, and the last one we are is rest and recovery. Because we have this idea, we can just keep going and going and going. And until we get sick, until we get completely exhausted, emotionally, physically, spiritually, virtually, otherwise known as burnout, until we get injured, until we have something that we have that forces us to, that's when we usually stop, or we wait for vacation or wait for layoff. But even then, we're so we could get into the scientific with the cortisol, the brain and the body and the adrenaline. I know I'm a recovering adrenaline junkie. I know how relaxing really got me. Like I got so much to do. So it's the, it's practicing, you know, practical daily decisions that you make. Like how much sleep? I don't tell nurses. I know what to do. You already know what to do, but you decide what time are you going to … and you … for that? What are you going to have for dinner? What are you going to drink or not drink for dinner? How many times are you going to say yes? What more are you going to take on and commit or over commit? So you get the idea. How simple, this is not easy. Not easy because it requires us to change our behavior, our MO, and our expectations, which is the goal, and the expectations of ourselves because they are up here. Ridiculous, ridiculous, what we expect of ourselves is this. Are you getting the picture?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
It's like I'm having a personal coaching call with you because this is what I struggle with, too. And I've also been practicing mindfulness. So, I started about three months ago. I would say every day, I have had some misses, but I've made it a habit that the first thing I do in the morning when I wake up is I do a ten-minute meditation. And I'm also working on mindful eating. I'll never forget this. When I met my current husband and we would go out to dinner or share a meal together. One day, he said to me, Boy, do you eat fast. And I think a lot of nurses do. Of course, to shove in our lunch or get a snack or something. And even when I was before I became a nurse and I worked in the restaurant industry, like I had ten minutes to eat something because I had to get back out there, that I realized I am not even paying attention to my food because I'm usually checking email or doing something else. So even just that. So I'm thinking of the nurse leaders who are listening to this right now, and how many of them actually take a lunch break, and how many of them actually sit in quiet and think about, what am I eating? What's it taste like? It even you're right. It's what's easy. Well, it's simple to do, but not always easy to do. But even just that one commitment that you're going to carve out 15 minutes. Maybe that's all you have, but it's 15 minutes where you're not going to have any distractions, and you're just going to maybe have your cup of tea or get something to eat. Now, is that something that you find the leaders who you've worked with, who have gotten to that point where they really do feel good about themselves and their work, and they're able to make decisions or some of those things that we're talking about, they've hardwired into their day. Or is this something that you think they still struggle with?

Diane Sieg:
Yes, and yes. Because left to our own devices, it's January, and I was at the gym this morning, and of course, it is jam-packed, but I know and in a few weeks, especially at 5:30 a.m., to go up. Yeah, we'll just do the regular. They'll have, we call it. We'll have our gym back. It takes a daily commitment and what I call recommitment because commitment to me is, I've decided, okay, I am committed to eat less sugar. I'm committed to get to the gym every day at 5:30 a.m.. Whatever it is, that's the decision. But guess what? This morning, it's dark. It's single digits here in Denver, and snowed last night. Did I want to get out of bed? I did recommit. I actually, I had to recommit the night before. I can't decide the going up because the bed is always going to win. So it takes a constant recommitment and practice and practice. So I say to, I mean, and I don't say a lot. I, they say a lot. They decide what they're going to commit to. They decide the coach, the nurse leader. They know their lives. They know their schedule. They know. And that's really what well-being is all about, is getting to know yourself and be truthful about yourself. Because we can be self-aware, but then we go, oh yeah, I'll be okay. That's just one more coffee. That's just one more engagement. I'll be okay. I'll be fine. And we're not really looking ahead and knowing that, but for me, it's too much. It is too much. I need a break. I need more rest. I need more time in between. So it's about. And we're all different. So there's not a cookie cutter way. Just do these five things. You're good to go. This is why life is like that. So to know myself and to make the best decisions for myself. Because your capacity is different than my capacity, and then to be compassionate about what my capacity is, because you and I both know the comparison is the thief of joy. But we do it all the time. We do it all the time. What are you doing that? Why shouldn't I be able to do that? We can't do that. Why can't I do that? So it's really about. It's all about, it's about you. Not here. We are in our heads. So, much we got from here and back into our hearts and well-being. To me, well-being is living more wholeheartedly. Living more wholeheartedly to feel good about yourself and what you do every day. And we do this with the, through the skill of self-leadership with some of the practices. Simple but not easy, that I discussed.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You're right. And so what it sounds like is for me, it might be mindful eating ten minutes of meditation as a way to start down that path of self-leadership. But for someone else, it might be exercising 30 minutes in the gym three days a week, or sitting somewhere in quiet and having a cup of tea. And back to your point, even people ask me, how do I address workplace bullying and incivility? Or how do I address this one person's behavior? I would love to say just do one, two, and three, and you're good. And back to your point. You can't just say do these five things, and they work. Now, there is evidence to support things like mindfulness, meditation, exercise, healthy eating, getting rid of ultra-processed foods, and all those things, and they collectively have an effect on your well-being. But for each individual, what I hear you saying, Diane, is you have to figure out what works for you. And you know, that sort of heart like what feels good to me versus might be something completely different for somebody else, but you're going to end up in the same place.

Diane Sieg:
Right. Well, and in the clip, and really, we're going to end up in a place that we need to be because to honor honoring my capacity for honoring myself. And if you want to say one thing that self-leadership is, it's about prioritizing my health. I'm prioritizing myself. I'm putting myself first, which, of course, the nurses have. Oh my gosh, that sounds so selfish that, I mean, I'm a leader, I'm a caretaker, I'm a caregiver. I have my team. I have patients and families I have to take care of. But here's the thing. You can't give what you don't have. We know that. We know this, but we don't actually integrate it. We know that you can't give from an empty cup. We hear it all the time. Take care of yourself before you take care of me. But it's just if we listen to it, we hear it with deaf ears. And then we do something else. That we don't take lunch. We don't go to the bathroom, literally. I actually have coached a leader whose name will be anonymous. She was going to the bathroom in your trash can at her office.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh, for heaven's sake.

Diane Sieg:
Her calls were back to back, and you and I know about that. Back to back, she didn't have time to actually relieve herself. So you're in the middle of a code. You're not going to be able to go to the bathroom. That's about the only time, you know, when you're doing resuscitating somebody. Otherwise, so basic need. Again, these are decisions about prioritizing yourself. Now, if I'm coaching Someone who's not making time to go to the bathroom, obviously, that's where we start. So you meet yourself where you are. Again, knowing yourself and knowing boundaries. And even if I'm in the middle of with a client, if there is something I have to go do or a basic need, I have to just say, excuse me for a couple of moments, for goodness sake. So that's an extreme example, but it's all about prioritizing myself. And I have to decide what that looks like, what makes me feel good. Because what makes me feel good about myself is different than what makes you feel good about yourself.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You're right. And it's interesting. About three months ago, we hired a COO to take me out of operations so I can truly be the thought leader I am and want to be. And one of our first conversations, she said to me, okay, so tell me what boundaries you've set for yourself. And I looked at her, and I said, well, one of the first things we started to do, and this was my choice. She asked me what I would be willing to do as far as setting boundaries as a start. So I said, I want to take Sundays off. And so we picked a date. And so, if you're listening, I want you to think about this. We picked a date. It was a date in December that I said starting this date, I am taking Sundays off, which I've had this company for 13 years, have not taken Sundays off. And she holds me accountable because I have to check on her metrics tracker. Did I take Sundays off? And I'm one of these people. I do not lie. I will, I'm always honest. Yes or no. And then it was looking at okay, no meetings after 6 p.m. because I'm on the East Coast. I have a lot of West Coast clients. So I was having meetings at 7 a.m., people on the East Coast and then 8:00 at night, people on the West Coast. And I'm like, no more. So I made I looked at looking at Diana's as you layer these actions. You layer you start with. In my case, it was Sundays off. You may be a leader, and you start with 15 minutes every day. I'm going to sit in my office, shut the door, no electronics, and I'm just going to enjoy a cup of tea, whatever that is for you. But pick something and start and then build from there. Because you mentioned going to the gym. I hate going to the gym. I've been going to the gym. I don't know how many days a week for the last three years. I hate January; I hate it because I can't get the weights that I want.

Diane Sieg:
I know all those new people.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I'm like, you go, okay, this is great, but I know that they're clogging up my space. So it can't just be a resolution that you make because everybody's making resolutions. And I really like how you said it's making a commitment to yourself. And that's not always easy to do, but it's important to do. And Diane, I'd like to shift gears just a little bit and talk about your well-being coaching initiative. Can you talk about what that is, what how you approach this leader well-being, so that people who are listening or watching right now maybe could either get some advice, or if they're interested, look into this program that you have?

Diane Sieg:
Absolutely. It is my life. So I can talk about it for three days if you want to do so, just as an overview. During COVID, one of my clients on the East Coast, Atrium Health, was working with the … at the time she approached me. And I've been, as you said in the intro, I've been speaking, training, coaching, nurses, what we used to call life balance, work-life balance, and stress management. And before COVID, it was resilience, which I don't use that word any longer. But she was interested in a formal program to to really change the culture of nursing to one of well-being and health. And she was a big visionary and she wanted to focus on coaching. And I, she asked, would you be interested? And I said, yes, I would because I didn't have a formal program. So, we did a two-year pilot. I made every mistake I could think of to make and learned a lot, and I could not have asked for a better development partner. They were engaged. They were supportive. They were patient. And here's what we learned. Well, it was an unbelievable experience and opportunity, and what we know now, we did an IRB study JONA has published us in in November. JONA, which I have to just say, I just got published hot off the press this month because we did a study. And here's what we know. When you support, and you structure to what we've been talking about to well, to really well-being through self-leadership through these be simple, but not easy. Practices and integrations. Integrating them in your life professionally and personally. We know that we improve stress. We improve burnout. We improve engagement. We improve self-leadership. We improve compassion. And the first three, which are huge indicators of well-being. Next two years, these coaches and champions that were coached in an eight-week program that learned, not only learned, but practiced and were supported and given a structure for what you and I have been talking about these CPR, they actually mean sustain, not only decrease but sustain their stress. The improvement in stress, burnout, and engagement 30%, which translated to an improvement of retention of 30%, which translated to a $3 million savings in turnover in a year. So that's from the … So we know it works. Now, I've always known this works. Everyone will say what you said earlier. Of course, there are studies. Of course, but we have hard data now. And you and I both know. And everyone on this call knows how much they're spending on turnover right now, especially with our new nurses our first year because we lose them in the first year, they're gone, and we often don't get them back, ever get them back to the bedside. So I just, I am, this is my mission. This is my mission to empower. This is about empowering nurses to feel good about themselves, and then they feel good about their work, and then quality improves, engagement improves, compassion, and help. Compassion improve. Safety improves. Everything improves. And now we know for a fact that we can improve as well. So it's very exciting work. And the motto just to go back to the motto that I used, I go in, and I train, coach, train, support, give structure to ten coaches. That's the initial. They go on, and I go on. They go on to coach other champions and other coaches in the organization. So I empower them to do it in their own way, in their own culture that I give them all. I don't give them my license, of course, and I continue to support them because the coaches need support as well. And I'm convinced that's why we have been able to sustain these results with Atrium Health. I'm working with another client now on their second year, and we continue to measure results because we are data-driven. We, I want to make sure that we're on the mark and they're getting what they need and support. As humans, we need support. You said you have a coach. You're a coach. I have a coach. I'm a coach, but we're human. And so we don't, we're not looking at perfection. We're looking at practice and continuing to grow and learn about ourselves and helping other people, empowering other nurses to learn and grow about themselves. And then this elevates it, elevates all of them.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
It does. And I always think about the leaders who we work with, especially in our consulting work. These leaders, they want to spend time with their team and help develop their team and do all those things. But because they're crazy busy, and we talked about that earlier, that and they're not prioritizing self-leadership their well-being, there's no way they can show up being the leader that they need to be to actually help cultivate a healthier work culture with their entire team. You just can't do it. As you said, you can't give from an empty cup, and you might think, okay, this is supposed to be a podcast about how to address bullying and incivility. Here's the deal. If you're in a leadership role and you're stressed 24/7, and you're not prioritizing taking care of yourself, there's no way you're going to be successful. And actually addressing disruptive behaviors and truly cultivating healthier behaviors, you've got to take care of yourself to be able to do that. I think we can all agree and give examples of times when maybe we weren't getting sleep, and we've been really stressed out. We get testy easily. That's my dad's getting testy with me. Okay. You get testy with people. We can all act out, especially when we're under a lot of stress. And so that's why it is incredibly important for leaders to not only focus on their own well-being, but doing so helps them to then be better at helping their team's well-being as a collective. And they can't figure it out themselves. Nobody can. And that's why even something as simple as reading about this. There's newsletters out there. There are podcasts specifically about well-being and self-care and all of those things. But then, to, hopefully, your organization, if they don't have some type of formal coaching or mentoring program for their leaders. Oh my gosh, why don't you suggest that? Okay, we're actually going to have Diane's contact information in the show notes, her website, LinkedIn profile, email address, and actually a link to all of your book. Well, the two books that you have, because you don't the third one isn't ready yet, but I really encourage you to just start exploring, getting some help from a coach, either a formal coach external to your employees within your organization, or even just start by reading learning more about how to take care of yourself, and Diane, as we start wrapping up, I'm actually answering my question. I'm going to ask you, but if you have a leader who's listening right now or who's watching and they're like, oh my gosh, this is me, everything Diane talked about is me, what would you recommend as a first step for them? Like what can they do to start really taking care of themselves so they can feel good about what they do?

Diane Sieg:
Well, it's of course, awareness is always first to really be aware and to know that there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with any of us. In fact, you have so many gifts and such skill and such responsibility and such important work right now and now more than ever in our in healthcare, because of so many reasons that you already know, I don't have to talk about the complexity. So I would say, I would say something really simple. And that's what I like to keep it simple because we make it complicated. Just slow down. Just slow down. Slow down your breath. Slow down your talking. Slow down your eating. To your point earlier. Slow down the breath. Just slow down. We are not. You are not living life like an emergency. It is not necessary on a day-to-day crisis after crisis. Slow down because that will harm the nervous system. And I can say, take three deep breaths to spend one minute in quiet. Get the Calm app. Just slow down. Are you kidding me? Would you like to slow down? Then you actually spend five minutes to say, gosh, my morning is absolutely insane. I have to, I'm going to take a look at that. Is there anything I can change here? Because, of course, we all have a plan for the day. It doesn't actually turn out to be that way. So we have to start adding in a little buffer so that we have time for the bathroom, have time for that call that we weren't expecting, or a policy change or whatever it might be. We're in healthcare. It changes minute to minute often, but that's what I would leave you with, is just to slow down. And this is coming from a very high-energy, adrenaline-junkie nurse. I say this to myself all the time: just slow down, even for just a few moments.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow. So, I think the universe is conspiring right now, because the meditation that I did this morning, I used the Calm app, and the theme was low and slow.

Diane Sieg:
Oh, nice.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I had lunch with Mo Chadwick, who's the system's chief nurse at Ascension Health. It turns out Mo and I went to college or high school together, and she's visiting this area right now. She has a home in Largo and I'm in Tampa. So we got together on Monday, and we were talking about some things and some people and how disruptive they can be. And she mentioned this about helping one of the nurses respond in a way. And I swear she said these words low and slow, instead of getting all hyper low and slow. And I saw it was a meme on Facebook that to have a beautiful life, successful life, I really can't remember what it said. I just remember resonating with it was a list of things, and one of them was slow mornings and I thought, oh my gosh, they have a slow morning where I'm not up. And then rushing. I have all these things to do. So your words of wisdom, low and slow, are so powerful even, and that's easy. And it's free, and it doesn't take a long time. You don't have to get your workout clothes on and tennis shoes and go out into the cold. It's just slowing down. And thank you, Diane. I know I have this podcast because I want to help leaders. That's my mission. I want to help leaders cultivate a healthy work culture. I want to eradicate bullying and incivility because I cannot stand it. I don't understand it. But, you know, today I was also helped by you. So I appreciate you more than you can imagine.

Diane Sieg:
Well, thank you, and I appreciate you too, and what you do and what you're doing. And, my gosh, we have to support our leaders. We have to support them. They are they are our future, and lead that their positions are what is going to dictate the whole nursing profession. So I'm right there with you, and I just thank you for this time to be able to talk about my absolute favorite topic. And it's so important. It's now more than ever and what you do. The bullying, incivility, and disruption is absolutely connected to well-being. We don't feel good about ourselves. Guess what? We're not going to be good to anybody else either, and it comes out in different ways. So thank you. I always enjoy meeting with you, and today has been such a delight for me.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, thank you, Diane. I look forward to your next book. I look forward to our continued conversations, and I just know the leaders listening or watching today are going to benefit greatly from you and your work. So, thank you for the great work that you're doing, and I want to thank all of you who took the time out of their day today to actually join us on this podcast, and I hope you walk away with some practical strategies for you to really begin to take care of yourself so that you can take care of your team. And again, we'll have links to Diane's resources in the show notes at the bottom of this podcast. And again, thank you all for being here. Take care. We'll see you soon.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found this podcast helpful, we invite you to click the subscribe button and tune in every week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit us at HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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