The Antithesis of Manitoba Healthcare

Ugh. This will be painful.

I am going to rip the bandaid off quickly.

Sadly, the wound is infected so it's not gonna stop there. Sorry.

If you'd like to read the report, it's here: CBC "Manitoba has some serious issues" (my paraphrase there)

I have had so many conversations about this by now that my head is spinning and my soul feels crushed with the deep need to just put it on paper already.

It is painfully obvious. Every single human that works in healthcare that has a conscience intact and is not a sociopath or a bully, knows exactly how to fix ALL of this. At least 80% of the entire workforce knows exactly what is needed and how to do it.

I write this for the 80%.

Take a breath, 'cause this is gonna suck. Few initial points…

1. First of all, all of these problems, existed before the pandemic. So let's just be super clear on that.
2. These issues were not resolved before 2020 because, why? Lack of wellness? Poor time management? Lack of stress management skills? Doctors want to have a family and be able to care about others at the same time? Wrong. This system has not gotten anywhere except further in the hole because bullies. For real. Control freaks. Bullies. Did I mention arrogant, non-accountable controlling old-school bullies with unresolved trauma clouding their judgement, in the workplace? Yes? Okay. Good. People who have not dealt with their own trauma in life and feel the need to control others to help themselves feel safe are the only reason we have this problem. Period. No other person on this earth working in leadership in a system like this would let this keep going on unless there were a select few, (20% of leadership) stopping them from doing what was necessary. And that is the problem in life in general and our healthcare system is no exception.
3. omg. why I am writing this.
4. I have had convos with healthcare people for years: here in MB, in Ottawa, in London England, in New York, the Middle East, whatever, so many convos since 2007. It's the same everywhere. What is the same? 20% of the people in healthcare are angry sad people that control the 80% who know exactly what needs to be done, exactly what needs to change, exactly how to make it all more efficient, exactly everything needed is already known. Those numbers are the same in every industry that ever existed. Ask Malcom Gladwell. In all industries, for the most part, people leave bosses not jobs. Bossy controlling and charming people end up in leadership roles, only god knows why at this point. I don't have time to quote those studies atm. but if you dared to read this article, you've seen those already.

Our problem is not resources.

Our problem is not lack of individuals willingness to work.

Our problem is not poor conflict management skills among front line workers.

Our problem is not doctors not being the super-humans we decided they should be in 1980.

Our problem is not nurses that don't go above and beyond.

Our problem is 20% leadership.

Our problem is no different than a family construct where the older generation doesn't want the younger generation to actually heal and live a fulfilling life because they sacrificed everything for them. It is triggering to have someone make a different choice than you did and get to live a better life.

It's like this, but not nearly as funny.

?Here is a rare success story from Manitoba.

I was pregnant at 40. WTF is a 'geriatric pregnancy' you ask? That's what they called mine. So that was fun and felt sooo good. It created so much confidence in my mind, which created so many positive neurotransmitters to support my body through the process. I mean, isn't that how you would feel?

But I knew better. If you've seen my work, heard me speak, you know

I knew better. Neuroscience and epigenetics helped me with my mindset. My OB said I had a remarkable pregnancy given my age. "Shocking" was all I sarcastically felt on the inside.

But here is the success part. While I did not love the constant freaking ultrasounds as I approached a 'due date' I did deeply appreciate one thing that went right. And while I take massive exception to how our healthcare system has patholgized childbirth, as if humans have not survived so long because it's a normal thing that we know how to do, I did have one thing go very right.

My OB did listen (apparently this can be rare) and did let me wait out a c-section until we all realized that kiddo was an undetected breach. Bum down. That was gonna be a problem. Before modern medicine I would have potentially been a goner.

As a nutritional therapist I already knew allll about the microbiome and so a c-section scared me for more reasons than the pain and inconvenience. I knew if my baby did not get proper microbiome transfer, she could end up with auto-immune and mental health struggles later. (unless those fecal transplants became cool very quick).

Here is where it went right.

When I arrived for the schedule c-section I met my OB's team of nurses. I quietly said that I wanted my baby to be seeded. My OB looked at me like a deer in head lights. The youngest, newest nurse, on his team said "Oh! I know how to do that!"

I almost cried for joy.

Key moment?

Not the new information taught to the new nurse. That's normal.

That is what is often squashed.

It was the OB, who comes from a line of OBs at HSC, that let her do it even though he didn't a have hot clue what it was.

Here is the antithesis of all this.

In order to support the wellbeing of healthcare workers, we have to apply current research and practices to supporting them. In order to do that, we have to piss off a lot of people in the system that have to grapple with the fact that they have been wrong for decades.

(that's hard, it really is)

What do I mean by that?

Well. Stuff and things like these:

*For the most part, sugar in the diet causes high cholesterol, not fats. Took 30 years for that correction to hit mainstream.

*50% of the time IBS and anxiety are present at the same time. Addressing one can sometimes alleviate the other. Why do we not talk about that more?

*Why do women over 45 get the same medication for ‘anxiety’ that men over 55 get for high blood pressure. (oh. I know. sigh)

*The field of psychiatry got a few important things wrong. Turns out (like, really looks like) there is no verifiable baseline for neurotransmitters in the body and new studies show that low dopamine does not cause depression. The new research coming out debunks so much of what we have believed about ‘mental health’. Scary man. (And it was always going to go this way, because if it was working then the so-called ‘mental health’ crisis would not have continued to escalate.) That was all the evidence I ever needed.

*Most of the models are wrong. Pathologizing the entire human experience was wrong. and it is not more exposed than in healthcare - because if we can't un-pathologize the experience and direct outcome of that experience, of our healthcare professionals, then we are doomed. Only brave leaders who are willing to #brenebrownthatshit can solve this problem.

*Our microbiome makes 90% of the serotonin in the body. So where is that in the conversation about mental health? Why are we medicating with SRIs instead of making sure the microbiome is healthy first and that the building blocks the body needs to make neurotransmitters were in our diet? If we know that there is no baseline for which to measure 'normal' levels of neutrotransmitters, why are we still medicating stress as if there is? Why is childhood trauma diagnosed as ADHD so often? If IBS can trigger anxiety via faulty firing along the gut-brain axis, why are we not looking at food and the digestive system before we diagnose anxiety? Give me a 13 year old with "IBS" and "Anxiety" and by addressing food, breathing and screen time, I will give you a 13 years old with neither of those things in a month and no medications needed. (I have the testimonials) Why is the easiest and simplest way to silence a woman reporting male violence, to diagnose her with a personality disorder? (these ones are reeeeally tough. I know. But who am I to keep this information to myself? What is the point of my life if I cannot share what I know? and these questions in this point are, like, industry rocking, profit killing, capitalism has a heart attack, tough)

*Mental health all by itself has been weaponized against victims of domestic violence in our courts, abusers get custody and the victim has their trauma used against them to diagnose them with a personality disorder - how did that happen? Where in the world, within our efforts to end the stigma around mental health, did it become a weapon?! We know we did it wrong when...

(this destroys Manitoban lives and puts sooo much unnecessary pressure on our healthcare system)

*Doctors are not always so much "burned out" a lot of the time as they are morally injured, which was likely the catalyst for the burnout. And the only place for that blame to land on, is on the system - and on leadership. Also hard to accept if you’re a leader.

*Why do we keep making doctors and nurses work more and more hours to deal with more and more issues that are actually outside their scope? Why would be not put an ounce of effort into prevention instead? What if patients went to a counsellor and got trauma-therapy instead of going in every two months for anxiety? What if children didn’t eat so much sugar and their microbiomes were healthy? How much less anxiety and skin rashes would there be? What if we had a proper strategy for domestic violence which impacts 1 in 4 Canadian women instead of diagnosing them with a mental health issues that stems directly from the trauma and the fear they live in constantly?

Fear is not a serotonin deficiency.

Trauma is not a dopamine deficiency.

A rash is not a cortisone deficiency.

A headache is not an Advil deficient.

High blood pressure from chronic stress is not a chemical deficiency.

Every human being that works in healthcare deals with all of the above mis-information in their own lives and are impacted by it the same way their patients are.

The massive overwhelm on our healthcare system comes from the outside - all of the patients that flood the clinics and ER, work in other workplaces that are toxic too. We are living lives created by poor choices made in a stress response/survival mode - a state where we are biologically prone to being less rational and less preventative in nature.

These patients that overwhelm the system are coming to the system for help with issues stemming from root causes that doctors and nurses are powerless to to do anything about. And it's not hard to put yourself in the shoes of a doctor or a nurse or other practitioners and imagine that it might be really hard to effectively care for the health of a population when you and your colleagues are experiencing the exact same issues.

If the healthcare system cannot start addressing the key sources of duress that steal vitality in their own people, their people will continue to suffer between a rock and a hard place and continue to quit.

Does that track?

Medical practitioners are dealing with all the same crap as the rest of us, they have the same poor outcomes in their physical and mental health - but it is worse for them because they don't just experience it in their own lives like everyone else, they look at it in the entire population every minute of every day.

That's why I include "moral injury" in my causes of burnout, and why I approach leadership the way I do.

The only way out of this mess is a bunch of conscious leaders who are willing to tackle the hard questions and hold space for the uncomfortable answers.

If the ‘healthcare system’ cannot admit all the things that it has been wrong about (and refused to correct when new information was available,) then it cannot help its own people heal. It will self-destruct. Doctors, nurses, specialists, surgeons, dieticians, allied health, etc, are dealing with life in the colour of all the mistakes the system they work for has made - and then refused to correct, adapt, adjust when new information was available. This is an antithesis if there ever was one.

And no one can touch the bullies that keep up the fa?ade, sealing the above fate. Why?

You can call it politics. You can call them politicians. You can call it unions. You can blame the inert system if you really want to. But at the end of the day our inability to deal with school yard bullies, address their trauma and use enough consequences to deter them, has put them in charge of all the systems.

Our healthcare system is only getting ‘worse’ because we still serve outdated, old school bullies and we seem to still sacrifice ourselves to the patriarchal way of doing life.

What did you do about it 20 years? Nothing because we didn’t really know. What are we gonna do about it now? There are a lot of strategies out there that work now, you just have to find them.

Can’t fire someone because the union won’t let you? How many emotionally unintelligent leaders, lead that union? Who are they accountable to? Can’t get the government to help you? How many emotionally unintelligent leaders did we vote in? Where is your language for the damage? If you don’t know what DARVO is, why not? Do you understand what a coercive controller looks like? Do you understand that we have to stop calling it bullying and call it by it’s real name, abuse?

This is a massive systemic issue that no one alive today is to blame for - but every single one of us is now responsible for it.

Here is our strategy.

1.???Trauma-inform everyone in your organization. everyone.

2.???Change the language, foster emotional intelligence and create new ways for people to HEAL. No more wellness washing. People need to heal.

3.???Learn how to hold space for difficult conversations – and that starts with you and the person you see in the mirror.

It’s not easy to be where I am, in a ditch, underneath the crossfire, it’s quite the breath-stealing view.

One more time, the whole point of this:

If ‘healthcare’ cannot admit all the things that it has been wrong about, then it cannot help its own people heal – if those two things do not happen, this crisis will end in collapse of the entire system.

And maybe it’s not “wrong”. Maybe it is more that we just felt a jilted, fooled, and didn’t want to admit a mistake. So instead of adopting the new valid science that kept coming our way, we dug our heals in. In doing that we condemned the next generation to suffer the consequences of our inability to say ‘oops, my bad, we got that wrong, let’s do better now that we know how to.” Like I said, conspricy is not the problem, theories are the problem. Maybe it’s just a bunch of humans driven by fear that keep making the same fear-based decisions that keep the other 80% of us feel like we are unable to do the right thing.

Anyway. I will hit pause for now.

This has been very difficult for me to write.

I welcome thoughts and insights and honest questions. There is more to say, but this some of the fundamental uncomfortable stuff we need to sit with for a while. We need to discuss. But no yelling allowed - I decline criticism for the sole sake of venting your personal angst.

Sonia