Gratitude Wildfire!

Monday. You oversleep, spill coffee on your scrubs, and pull into your workplace parking lot on two wheels.

You love your job and being a nurse--this is your calling! However, some days, you feel exhausted, drained. Maybe unappreciated. Between work and home life, your plate is no longer full—it’s overflowing, and it’s no surprise that being grateful didn’t make your to-do list.

Put on the brakes. Stop and think. When was the last time you looked at all the good in life?

Three nursing educators (see names below) who knew they—and their colleagues—needed a boost and a refreshed vision joined forces to create the Gratitude Ambassadors. Their mission? To incorporate a culture of gratitude to encourage, re-energize, and show appreciation for those they work with and teach. They found that the culture of gratitude spreads like wildfire.

Some of their ideas:

• A gratitude bulletin board in a shared area can offer interactive group involvement. Fill the board with encouraging messages that can be removed by colleagues and re-posted to a mirror or a computer screen or given to colleagues for motivation.
• Mount a “Tree of Thankfulness” on the wall along with blank “leaves” so colleagues can write and post onto the tree why they’re grateful to be nurses.
• Set out a basket of mini-greeting cards so workmates can write positive messages about one another and post them outside others’ office doors/lockers/workspaces. (Imagine walking along a hallway at work and being able to read positive and encouraging words about the staff.)
• Try a voluntary “Secret Pals” program. Nurses choose a participating colleague’s name and covertly leave notes and little gifts of encouragement and cheer.
• Launch a monthly Gratitude newsletter that offers encouragement, celebrates birthdays, and allows team members to “shout out” other team members for their hard work and dedication.

The authors witnessed a shift from gloomy to grateful at their college as they practiced living out 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, and were reminded that “we each are blessed with a gift and must never forget that the light of Jesus in us often shines the brightest in the darkness (Micah 7:8).”

This post is derived from the JCN article, “Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude” by Kacie Duncan, Heather Cole, and Suzanne Prevost.

Read their article here: https://journals.lww.com/journalofchristiannursing/fulltext/2024/04000/cultivating_an_attitude_of_gratitude.18.aspx

How are you impacting your workplace and colleagues and/or sharing the joy of Jesus in your nursing practice? We invite you to write a blog post or submit an article to the Journal of Christian Nursing. Contact Karen Schmidt, karen.schmidt@intervarsity.org, with your post or article idea.