 Okay, thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone wherever you may be. Dr. Raymond Francis Sarmiento and for health updates, this is our 183rd episode. Thank you for being part of our credible online community and to all those who have just discovered us for today, welcome and we hope you learn a lot from today's webinar. In honor of celebrating International Women's Day 2024, we are excited to organize this webinar in partnership as you will see Dr. Susie here with the World Health Organization Western Pacific Regional Office and the double H or collaborating centers from Australia and the Philippines. In this webinar, we'll be highlighting the crucial role played by nurses in the healthcare sector and underscore the necessity of prioritizing their well-being within a supportive framework. Nurses have long been a backbone of healthcare and they demonstrate unwavering commitment and resilience in the face of unprecedented challenges, none more than during the COVID-19 pandemic and despite their indispensable contributions, the profound impact of their work may at times go unnoticed and their own well-being remains a vital yet overlooked aspect of the healthcare landscape. So for today's webinar, we'll initiate an international conversation exploring the challenges faced by nurses and devising strategies for fostering a more supportive and nurturing environment. So I'm Dr. Raymond Sarmiento from the National Telehealth Center, National Institutes of Health University of Philippines Manila. Always a pleasure to be with all of you during our regular Fridays and also my pleasure and honor to host this program again with Dr. Susie Pineda Mercado who is currently the director for program management at the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office. Dr. Susie, you're on mute ma'am. Good afternoon Raymond and good afternoon to everyone. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good day wherever you are. We are very honored to be with so many excellent speakers today on the nursing field and I'm just so happy to be back with you Raymond to talk to the audience and we are going to talk about caring for carers. I think a very, very important topic but I just like to say that I have a new job in the World Health Organization and so I've missed you but we are looking now at opportunities for working with the WHO collaborating centers on being part of the health updates on a more regular basis. So I think as we progress, this is the first in a what should I say a little experiment on how we can work with our collaborating centers. The World Health Organization has I think 182 collaborating centers all over the region and they all have expertise. They all have excellent speakers and I think it's time for us to share that expertise with the rest of the rest of the region. So anyway, I'd like to greet all of you who are with us live in the webinar. I know there are people who are watching us on the playback because they can't be here in the Zoom but could be also watching on TV UP or the UP system Facebook page or the TV UP Facebook page and of course we also have a mainstream TV UP signal TV channel 101 and then again as I said on the playback people come back and see this and I'd encourage all all the nurses who are with us today to share this video with with your colleagues with the students. It's International Women's Day so I'm in purple International Women's Day so happy International Women's Day to everyone. We've got Raymond we've got distinguished speakers today. That's correct. Yeah and I'm just so happy. Okay let me make the introductions right so we have Dr. Amelia Latu Apuha-Mango Tuipoloto who we call Amelia but she's actually the Chief Nursing Officer of the World Health Organization all the way from Geneva where it's 4.30 in the morning but she is here with us to celebrate International Women's Day and to talk a little bit more about health. Then we have Dr. Stacy Blythe from the Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health at the University of Technology in Sydney that is a collaborating center for nursing midwifery and health development and of course our very own from the Philippine General Hospital Maria Cecilia Ponzalan Deputy Director for Nursing and Affiliate Faculty of the UP College of Nursing which is also a WHO collaborating center so I'm looking forward to a great discussion with these wonderful women who have dedicated their lives to healthcare and frontline healthcare and are also teaching our young nurses so we have a great lineup so don't leave us I think you're going to enjoy this okay Raymond over to you. Thank you Dr. Suzie so we'll start off our discussion and to set our discussion into context we'll be watching a very very short video that the TV UP team comes up with week in week out that's what we call Person on the Street video just to get a baseline sense of what common folks on the street really understand on the topic on hand our interview is uh some of them are in the nursing profession and the question that we asked do you have a family member or know someone or are you a nurse and what do you think are the challenges that nurses face and how do you think uh do they cope please watch this uh yes I do uh I have a cousin who works as a nurse in America yes actually some of my auntie and my wife is a nurse I have a relative who's a nurse he was my uncle most of my family and my mother's side are nurses my mom uh is a nurse my my sister is a nurse we're family of most likely uh adjusting to a new environment because he started out as a nurse here in the Philippines there I'm pretty sure the culture here is much different from the culture where he is now pretty sure there's lots of challenges nurses face uh first thing I could think of is working long shifts and working on odd shifts they have a very uh different schedule sometimes they're working overnight in the mid-afternoon early in the morning he always shows me um usually the patients who are their own patients I mean so every time he shows me that and he she shows me all the I guess the machines inside the room of his patient it's really overwhelming how much he does just to keep the patient stable especially here in the Philippines is that uh I think they're uh overworked and underpaid that is why I think most of the nurses here uh go abroad to have a better opportunity in like uh financially one good thing is that he's got his family with him over there so uh he's not gonna go through it alone if if ever it was just him I I'm imagining uh I think it's gonna be harder for him to cope with loneliness and homesickness probably what me and my wife did is that um I tried to support her in every way especially when she was working in the outback uh I tried to be because because I was living in Townsville which is 16 hours away so I tried to be with her every three weeks just to give her support and now that we're uh finally together again I try to um like all the small things like just picking her up and dropping her off to work uh preparing meals for her he hopes up with his work by usually visiting Arlola and they have I guess a Filipino dinner or lunch whatever because this in Florida is not here who would just you know stay at home relax get some sleep yeah so uh hearing how nursing or how healthcare system here in Australia is you can't really not compare it with uh how we are handling things in the Philippines it's very different reduce the ratio of patients to nurses but sometimes like having a I'm not really sure about numbers but having one nurse handling so many patients it's just contributing to fatigue uh increases the risk and of course just getting them overwork I think aside from uh giving them a bump with their salaries I think they should be given some sort of benefit like uh front liners discount or like have them have some sort of like uh housing project or and of course another thing is compensating them fairly and uh right on the standard because uh some countries value nurses very highly while others unfortunately don't okay thank you so much tv up for that I think that's really an eye opener for many um and uh from different parts of the world no Raymond is that correct we have people from different parts of the world yes yes thank you for that I think that that's a good way to start off our discussion and um as we move forward we'll be talking a little bit more about um how do we care for our carers so Raymond over to you thank you doctor Susie just a little bit of housekeeping before we go to a webinar proper all certificates of attendance uh we'll be given to those who watch at least 50% of the webinar duration uh we've received inquiries on previous webinars which we have answered so if you still have any other questions uh maybe you feel you should have received but did not please email us uh in our up email address for our webinar today we'll have sort of um the round table discussion after our speakers have presented uh will be entertaining question question and answers uh portion for um and be moderated by the group so for our very first speaker uh she will be introduced by doctor Susie okay thank you so much Raymond my honor to welcome to our to our discussion today doctor Amelia Lato Apohamango Tuipolotu who is the chief nursing officer of the world health organization all the way in Geneva at 4.30 five o'clock in the morning so Amelia welcome to the webinar madang sorry magendang umaga wonderful you got it you got it umaga yes welcome Amelia happy international women's day uh inspire inclusion of nurses and midwives to be included in dialogue and decision making to forge better health system in a better world supporting universal health coverage for all population everywhere can i just ask for my screen please yes thank you very much director and of course it is an honor for me to be here and uh i would like to share as per our theme for this morning a caring for nurse for carers listening to nurses next slide please the overview of my presentation i will talk about my journey to wHO chief nurse and speak to the importance of listening to nurses and share a little bit about my draft strategic directions 23 to 25 share the basic emergency care campaign that we are currently running and share also our nursing and midwifery global community of practice which encourages listening to nurses and midwives around the world next slide please my personal journey to wHO chief nursing officer i started in tonga after returning from university in australia as in charge of the surgical ward this was the most busiest ward and still is in tonga's uh tertiary referral hospital then become a lecturer and acting principal of the school of nursing and later become director of nursing and later followed by being the chief nursing officer of tonga and minister for health for tonga during COVID-19 and chief nursing officer for wHO so hopefully with some local impact together with nurses and of course through listening to nurses and have national impact in tonga and hopefully now in our collaboration together we can make global impact to enhance nurses and midwives um in health systems to deliver universal health coverage for all people of the world next slide please in tonga there is a concept known as lea bit now with your work is your message uh my pathway to gaman chief nurse uh we've worked uh in collaboration with nurses and listening to nurses uh we work together on clinical productivity uh designing and mapping and developing national policies including our tonga national professional standards for the registered nurse uh work on quality competency based education uh research and continuous professional development uh work on leadership training for our not only uh current and potential future leaders but our young leaders uh in nursing and midwifery uh nurses grow and midwives grow wellness we had reading clubs youth leadership uh we also focused on performance management system and as a gaman chief nurse i used to present tonga's intervention at the world health assembly and also pacific intervention as a minister and a member of the legislative assembly and cabinet from 2019 to 2021 at the same time i was executive board member for the world health organization and uh executive board uh repertoire uh during my time as minister and of course working together listening to nurses and midwives and also the healthcare workforce um we uh were able um to deliver work uh and ensure that there were uh no recorded deaths for measles outbreak uh that was happening in the pacific um and also covid-19 uh early uh during uh covid-19 um pandemic uh our cabinet approved hazard allowance for nurses and midwives and healthcare workers working uh during uh covid-19 um very early so uh it this is a clear demonstration of um our cabinet uh you know listening to our healthcare professionals and our nurses uh we launched uh the first ever alti pcr laboratory for testing covid-19 early in june 2020 this was a laboratory and testing system that we did not have um and we were able to deliver uh testing and build capabilities and get the resources and the system done uh in our uh in tonger uh one of the key thing that i'm always proud of is uh uh the nurses nurse practitioners and midwives act 2021 that we worked on since 2017 but didn't get um get it through uh uh legal processes until i became minister and moved it through uh legal processes and passed it uh through parliament and uh was given royal assent in october 2021 that this is the ever first time nurse practitioners and midwives uh uh mandated by law and uh the last one uh uh the launch of the national health information system in 2021 next slide please and this is uh a part just sharing from my experience in tonger that we work together listening to nurses listening to the carers work together to develop the national strategies uh uh for tonger which includes governance uh professional standards career pathway models of care uh you know practice competencies leadership and management continuous professional development education vision as you can see uh going up to nursing nurses going digital but also the very last one uh speak to influential policy voice the need for nurses to be at the table and to be able to um dialogue and have conversation and debate and be able to influence policy decision making next slide please and you can see here some of the work that we have done together uh developing our career strategic uh directions which has a career pathway for nurses and midwives our professional standards our code of ethics review a very comprehensive review of our act by professor jill white and professor mary kirella renowned and leading scholars um in governance and leadership and uh regulation of nurses and midwives and our performance management system and you can see here um at the rd for wipro who have been listening to nurses and who have been assisting nurses and midwifery work this is a picture of us visiting the university of sydney and the work that we do together um and uh we were able to do a nursing degree feasibility study which review our our education program uh looking at gaps um and presenting a business case for our bachelor degree program and also uh standards for enhancements of our nursing education towards a bachelor degree level which is something of uh significant focus now hopefully in the very close future we will implement the degree program next slide please and uh the world health organization resolution that nurses are very proud of uh in may 2021 the world health assembly adopted uh uh the strategic directions for nursing and midwifery 2021 2022 uh with a call for investment in education jobs leadership and service delivery this is uh through res resolution 74.15 uh that all the 194 member states adopted which called uh on member states to implement the policy priorities within this resolution invest in nursing and midwifery maximize uh uh their contributions uh to health systems and universal health coverage make sure that nurses are supported protected and motivated and uh establish and strengthen national and subnational systems uh to support senior leadership roles in education and practice for nurses and midwives next slide please uh this is draft strategic directions uh in my office looking at global leadership building uh global leadership uh that is trusted and respected by the member states trying uh the best to raise the profile for nurses and midwives with regards to education research jobs regulation leadership and impact of course and service delivery at the same time trying to get uh donor engagement uh that donor supports programs for for nurses and midwives we have a global community of practice which i will share later uh we have a future leaders program and we have a campaign that aims to support nurses and midwives around the world to access basic emergency care training uh for 25 countries by 2025 and the very last one is about performance management system that um demonstrate accountability uh to the member states and the public next slide please and this is our health emergency uh program uh developed uh by who in collaboration with the international red cross and international federation of emergency medicine we focus areas of in injuries and cds infections had attacks complications of pregnancies and with best evidence more than half and more than a third of annual deaths and disability in low and middle income countries uh result from conditions that could be treated with basic emergency care and while this training uh is um are conducted it is uh uh challenging for nurses uh as they are limited in scope uh uh often expensive uh not adapted to low resource settings and not designed for multidisciplinary uh team next slide please but however the evidence uh and impact of basic emergency care in Uganda in Bendy and Kuala hospital after data collected uh one year uh in key emergency conditions as you can see shared here uh with uh implementation of basic simple tools uh developed by who and after one year of post intervention there is significant uh degrees in mortality of 45 percent so this is a course that has demonstrated clear evidence of contribution uh huge contribution dual reduction in mortality next slide please and this is i just wanted to show this picture this is the chief nurse violet in Uganda hospital she is leading great work uh facilitating BEC together with Halimar to her left and the physician to the right uh BEC have been uh incorporated to the continuous professional development and she has been presenting in our global webinar in our community of practice and hopefully uh in the future uh some of the great work that you're doing in the Philippines can be shared in our global webinar uh next slide please and this is the work that they do at the front line next slide please uh our basic emergency care next slide i don't think i'll play the video we can look at it later and and our community sorry our community of practice yes our community of practice is about also listening to nurses and midwives uh around the world we have uh resources there we have hub and and sub groups and we host webinars and in the future please join our global community of practice and our future young leaders program next slide please and this is our team in the office uh and uh three of us in office and three consultancies next slide and this is the the dg dr tedros uh wjo direct the general uh calling that we must care for them our nurses and of course our midwives uh at the same time uh making sure that they have decent pay and working conditions enabling them to work to the full extent of their updated scopes of practice because at times uh nurses and midwives are trained in specific scopes of practice and skills but they are not enabled within health systems to deliver and practice uh their skills uh that they have trained in and of course seeing more nurses in senior positions and and this will enhance gender parity you know seeing more women in leadership position next slide please and we are very delighted with the dg support for nurses and midwives and this is our nursing and midwifery uh community of practice please join uh and our call for basic emergency care greater access for nurses and midwives maraming salamat oh thank you so much thank you very much amilia that was wonderful i think um you're going to see some hearts and some clapping coming out there on your screen but thank you so much that was a great that was a great presentation i think there are so many touch points for um more collaboration with our nurses all over the world and later in our um in our zoom call in our sorry in our q&a q&a um part uh we hope we can expand a little bit more but thank you so much wonderful wonderful presentation okay over to you reymond thank you thank you dr milian dr susie for our next presenter next speaker uh she is from one of the double show collaborating centers uh she's the professor of the discipline of nursing from the faculty of nursing midwifery and health university of technology sydney and it's at double h o collaborating center for nursing midwifery and health development please welcome to your screens dr stacey blight thank you very much for the introduction and i'm really excited to be able to get to share with you today um but in the interest of time i actually think i might change just a little bit of what i want to share with you first before i start i just want to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that i'm presenting from today it's tradition out of respect in the australian culture to acknowledge that this land has been cared for by first nations people for a very long time and i'm currently on darrag lands and i want to pay my respects to the elders past present and emerging now i was told i'm fairly new to uts and i was very excited to go to uts and find out that part of the nursing faculty was um the world health organization collaborating center and it's a real joy to be a part of such an organization that's working throughout the world to help improve the lives of people everywhere and to support nurses and midwives of course as well i come from a long family of nurses my mom was a nurse my dad was a nurse and he actually retired as a licensed perfusionist and when he retired a few years ago he was quite frustrated with the system and he had become a little bit disillusioned with why he first went into nursing he found himself arguing with administrators who had taken over the hospital who wanted to buy cheaper equipment when he knew more expensive equipment had better health and safety ratings and he found himself very frustrated that his expertise as a nurse and perfusionist wasn't respected now my father is one of the um smaller minority of nurses who happens to be a man and i know that we're celebrating international women's day today but his frustration with administration persists to this day and what he found during his frustration was that again his expertise was not respected because what was more important was the bottom line and what i'm found in my own journey is that often in many places in the world it's the same problem what i've also found is that nurses are empowering themselves to be able to speak the language of the administrators while nurses and midwives may be focusing on things like evidence-based care and quality assurance and improvement unfortunately sometimes the people making decisions are looking at things like cost if we can stop and show and demonstrate clearly that by practicing evidence-based by practicing in an evidence-based fashion that we actually reduce costs we'll end up with healthier patients better outcomes and agreed um purchases as we move through our practice one of the things that i did in order to prepare for today was to look at the issues that are currently um nurses are currently facing in australia and they're very similar to the issues that are being faced around the world i'd like to share just a screen that gives some examples of ways that we could address these issues or the issues that need to be addressed i'll just skip forward to that what we need is more investment in education and training we need to provide adequate funding and support for nurse education training programs and we need to make sure that this includes things like scholarships and tuition assistance and professional development opportunities for those who don't have um the means in which to do that improving work conditions making sure nurses are safe when they're on the floor making sure that nurse to patient ratios are adequate ensuring adequate staffing levels and providing access to necessary equipment and resources promoting a healthy work life balance can help reduce burnout and turnover rates growing up the daughter of a nurse i can remember many times having to leave a birthday party or a family dinner because one of my parents had been called into work yet again being the child of a nurse can take a toll on you but i was never ever too upset about that because i knew that my parents were making a difference in the lives of the children and families that they worked with every day but if we have adequate staffing ratios perhaps that burden on the family wouldn't be as big we need to ensure that there's competitive compensation and benefits offering competitive salaries bonuses benefits packages helping to attract and retain talented nurses recognizing the value that nurses contributions make to healthcare and compensating them accordingly we need to create career advancement opportunities pathways such as mentorship programs and continuing education opportunities leadership development initiatives that enable nurses to progress in their careers and stay engaged in their profession we need strong mental health and well-being support for nurses particularly as we have come out of significant frontline battles with the covid virus we need to promote diversity and inclusion and although today is international women's day and we do celebrate that at least in australia 80 percent of the nurses are women we do also want to ensure that there's representation from other backgrounds other genders and we want to make sure that our healthcare system is inclusive and equitable we want to advocate for nurses we need the public to stand up and say hey we appreciate nurses and we're willing to do something to demonstrate that in a regular way collaborating with stakeholders and listening to the nurses is very very important and in the australian context we need increased leadership and advocacy for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses in midwine a couple of the things that we do in australia to celebrate nurses is like many of you we recognize may 12th which is Florence Nightingale's birthday as the international nurses day we also have awards in australia that are state and local and industry based as well but i just want to say that moving forward the best way that we can show our appreciation and support for the work that nurses do is to listen to them nurses listen to us they hear us often in moments that are most vulnerable in our darkest time when we need the most support and they are there for us so we need to be there for them by listening to them as well thank you all right thank you so much dr stacey um dr susie thank you stacey oh my goodness that's bringing a tear to my eye the last the last part of yeah i i really appreciate your sharing and um taking this from a very personal perspective and i think this opens our eyes also to um i like the part where you say we should be listening because nurses listen to us and i think um as we progress in in our collaborative efforts we should do more of this and um encourage it in all countries so thank you so much stacey uh reina our next speaker our next speaker is uh maria sasilia punzalan the deputy director for nursing of the philippine general hospital she's also affiliate faculty of the up manila college of nursing which is a w h o collaborating center sesil welcome to the program and please take the floor so good afternoon everyone um so i'll be sharing our experience here in the philippine general hospital how we care for our carers our nurses so allow me to share my slide okay so um i've been with the institution for almost 32 years and i have heard our nurses um um their complaints um their um their patient loads in the ward how tired they are because of the situation that we are faced with every day so um among this this is the daily situation that our nurses are confronted with so in pgh um we have the regular wards no so on the nurse patient patient ratio here is about one is to 15 and one is to 17 more or less for the critical care it's uh one is to two to one is to four for our emergency room it's about one is to 20 and sometimes one is to 25 for our outpatient clinics no um one nurse serves as high as 50 patients and sometimes as high as 90 patients a day so there is really increase much increase in the workload um in the wards our nurses are handling mixed type of patients meaning um we have if they are handling about 15 patients there will be about three or four intubated patients or patients with uh are on high flow high flow oxygen and also we have um experience long lives of our staff no um some of them since we are um the of course um nurses are mostly women so there are reports of long lives related to difficult pregnancy so because of all this um the present situation our nurses are you know they experience fatigue they are exhausted no there are increased number of absences their working hours are extended no our usual time of um working hours is only eight hours but our staff um extend to 12 hours and even up to 16 hours so they go over time which is um not paid but um this is upset by an off duty okay so um with that particular those situations no what we do in our hospital now is we allow them to enjoy their vacation lives their um this that's part of their privilege no to have some time to spend time with their family whether local or international so they go um they go to the to the beach no in Palawan or whether in maybe in Boracay and um international no so they spend their vacation in Japan or um Singapore and just recently no um um I saw and uh I was able to sign some vacation leaves that are you know related to watching a concert in Singapore because we all know that Taylor Swift is there right now and um also in the past no to watch the BTS concert so um we also grant requests for transfers to a unit of choice um for example um I have um a staff in a ward we're in um since it's too heavy a load she requested to be transferred to a unit with much lesser load because she wants to conceive you know she has um she's 30 she's um 39 years old and she wants to have a baby and uh you know she's going to her doctor now and uh and the doctor will give some instructions all this she um the doctor tells her na you need to take a rest you need to be relaxed but you know that the situation in the ward is very different so we also um gave recognition no to our staff so um recently maybe two years ago our head nurses they gave um awards not to the model head nurse and to the model charge nurse and um for our um mental health group um recently they also gave a sunflower award for the mental health champions and uh giving recognition is um very important no because it boosts up the morale of the staff no um sometimes they they would really feel that they are um they are good and that they are doing a good thing no towards the their work no and relating to their patients and um for um some of our nurses no they are they already feel burnt out and um we try to develop a reciprocal program meaning um we try to rotate we rotate the staff from for example um our nurses in the ER are exhausted already so we give them time to be out of the area and um in exchange there will be nurses from other areas who will be um going to that particular um area so it's going to be a an exchange an exchange and then um recently also no we were able to rehire some of our staff who want to come back um they um some of these nurses they work abroad no in the middle east and um they long for family support so um one of them she asked if she can be um rehired and um we have um the requirements no the process for rehiring our staff just as long as they finish their um three-year contract and accomplished all the clearances before they left when they resigned before and so when they are rehired of course there should be a good recommendation from their previous um supervisors so um also another thing is um family no they come back no into the Philippines because of family reasons like um they want to be their children no in some parts when they leave the country they don't bring their family along with them so these nurses from um going to the middle east it's only by themselves so they miss their family so much and that they will say that um my child she doesn't recognize me anymore no because um I left when she was three years old four years old and now that she is nine no she's closer to her um her grandmother or she's closer to her nani who's taking care of her and you know it sometimes the mother no she feels so she she feels so left out no and um I'm the mother and that's why I was I'm the one who's supposed to take care of her so then they um they come back no so we do um lately we are getting um some of our nurses to be um rehired in the hospital also um there are um quality improvement projects no and these quality improvement projects are coming from the nurses themselves they think of things that um they feel that arises no from the environment and um one of the um quality improvement projects that recently told to us was the self-care station so these quality improvement projects need not be a very big thing or these innovations are we're not expecting things to be really um you know something unlike an invention so it's um something that they feel that it's a need in their own hospital in their own unit so why not no so she she um actually uh this self-care station so what is this self-care station actually it's just a a drawer no this plastic cabinets or plastic drawers that we can buy um in the grocery or in the department stores and um first drawer will contain bad band aids the second will be an ointment no ointments or um can be the third drawer will be the pain relief pads and then number four can be candies and then number the drawer number five can be the disposable utensils so why band aids so sometimes they have experience in the wards that they um somebody will get a cut no because of a certain procedure so very handy that there will be a band aid in the nurses station ointments um i'm not sure if anyone here is using those um ointments to relieve you of stress and all that so um or sometimes um what you want to put no in the head no or sometimes in the in the skin so for the pain relief pads um sometimes as we age no we feel some pains muscular pains no on our shoulders on our necks no so it's good if there will have some um ready to use relief relief pain relief pads no that's just in the corner of the nurses stations and then candies sometimes um our nurses don't get to eat on time so to avoid hypoglycemia no and because they will if they are from six to two thirty sometimes they eat their lunch at four or five so um a chocolate candy can be very useful no and um it will give you energy again to go on with work and then the disposable utensils when somebody um a patient or maybe a colleague drops by and gives you some food then there are no utensils then we can um use these utensils um to eat no while grabbing a five minute break no um from work so this self care station can be um can still be improved if it will depend on the needs of the nurses or the attendants or the utility workers in that particular unit so actually when she presented this to me i was um um i think you know doing self care is very important no because um you cannot really care for others if you don't care for ourselves first no so um other things that we do no here in the hospital we recognize one each and everyone's competencies so we have a group here um nursing informatics they address the i form the group here because uh we don't have um a nursing database so i called being like six or seven nurses who are very good in um doing um informatics no so hope so that we can come up with our database so they um when they when we i formed them um they were able to come up with this um project no of the working database and then um of course um the hospital's trust is on research and um whenever we have um nurses who we think and we see that are good in research then we also um um if we recognize this particular talent of them then we tell them to um develop some researches and if they can um you know present this no to the different societies locally and some of them are also um uh presenting this internationally and there is one nurse who will be um um presenting her study in july in Singapore and um provision of training programs is also very important no we have um capacity building um for our nurses so these training programs may be related to their specialties no we provide um acls bls regular updates no on different nursing care topics and um the programs that they develop are usually related to the identified training needs of the staff so um together with um this we also provide um training programs also not just for the staff no but for our leaders no our um head nurses and even to our chief nurses no because we want them to have that competency on how we are able to um take care no of our staff so we always allow our nurses to explore on quality improvement projects and innovations just like um what the the staff um relate related to us on the self care and um after actually when pandemic came no in 2020 there was really um a shoot up no of concerns on the mental health state of our staff so um we had um we have some nurses who have anxiety and who are experiencing depression so to address this mental health state no concerns um we have the pgh care society for nurses actually this group no are also our nurses no um they started last 2017 so what does care mean it's counseling and assistance towards recovery and empowerment the main objective of the pgh care society is to provide confidential peer support services to nurses who are at risk or experiencing mental health issues and concerns and mainly to promote a positive work environment that supports psychological health and safety so when this was created in 2017 so um it was um started by our nurses from the psychiatric ward and then so i i think um they were initially three who um conceptualized this program and and now that it's expanding it's expanding when pandemic hit us in 2020 we were able to maximize these nurses from the care society because at the time when pandemic came um many of our nurses of course they don't want to be assigned in the COVID wards so of course the reasons were um so we cannot go home um i have my child no she's still young how can i go home but we at the time um the duty of the nurse was two weeks straight duty and then two weeks off but when you're on off duty you cannot just go home if you are hand if you handle the COVID patient no so there's the fear of transmitting the disease so um we had briefing and debriefing sessions for our staff because we had to explain to them the situation no and um it was really hard to convince and um but we were there to listen to their um anxieties no and um their fear no mainly the fear of hand handling a COVID patient so um not just the head nurses but the chief nurses are also doing the the thing that we have to listen and we try to really explain to them um why we are here as nurses this is really part of our um duty and it's our to serve the COVID patients so until now no the care society has been um very much um involved no um providing psychological health and safety among our staff so um with that no um i think what us um nursing leaders let's have to we have to give a more personality so let's listen that's all thank you very much thank you very much Cecil but another very very very good presentation um again you'll see the hearts and the clapping emoticons coming up um i think i really love the self-care station so many nice ideas for us to to come forward right in the interest of time we're going to have a very short Q&A and um Raymond will ask everyone to open their um open their cameras uh and i just have one question for everyone and just give us a very short answer but then we will have to um we'll have to close the webinar soon okay so the question is what is an act of kindness that you have experience that you'll never forget so i'm going to start to use Cecil what's the act of kindness that you have received that you'll never forget um okay um i think um for this particular case um when we rehired the staff she gave me a sushi bake gave me a sushi bake and um because uh we it was really a struggle no so um getting her back no because of some situations uh so um and that act of kindness no really touched me and um i feel that she appreciated though the efforts that i gave and um to her during her during her um struggle to be back here thank you Stacy how about you an unforgettable act of kindness i would have to say whenever a student who i'm teaching nursing to comes to me and says that they understand and they thank me for explaining a difficult concept in a way that they can actually process and and um apply that always makes me feel fantastic and they don't have to give that feedback so it's lovely to know that they understand nice okay how about Amelia uh thank you very much dr Susie i think during COVID-19 uh when um i was one of the uh few first uh to be given the COVID vaccine uh the nurse was very passionate because um i do have allergic reactions uh to some drugs um so she was really you know uh you know touching me and explaining um you know in details you know and you know giving the injection and also later on you know following up on me so you know you really feel that you're cared for uh so i was very happy and very impressed with our immunization team and our nurse led immunization team the other one is um you know very powerful men um uh within the country you know following up on on the weekends Amelia are you having a arrest uh make sure that you take time out and and have a rest and because they understood the very challenging time on debates and conversations around COVID-19 but also the recognition of the importance of mental health that our director of nursing have shared and personal care i thank you thank you so much Amelia and thank you so much to all our speakers uh we don't have any more time but it's been great listening to you and um thank you for your time for being here for sharing and we hope that our audience will take your messages forward and we can multiply um all of these great ideas that you have to help our nurses so i'm going to turn over formally to Raymond to close the program but again on behalf of the world health organization and our collaborating centers i'd like to thank tv up and everyone who has made this webinar possible Raymond over to you thank you thank you to all of the nurses and thank you doctor Susie for that wonderful last statement before we conclude our program we want to mention that all of our webinars are archived for viewing at the tv up youtube channel including this webinar that's being stream live streamed uh to to everyone uh you can also catch it at the signal tv channel 101 but for youtube you just go to www.youtube.com forward last tv uph and you'd be able to see the latest webinar there and all of our 182 webinars before that we also have our what we call um shorts videos uh there's a tab there in the same youtube channel where you'll be able to see uh selected presentations very short consumable videos in youtube so this formally closes our webinar for the week we hope and look forward to your company again next friday from uh 12 noon to 1 p.m. it's a day together we can stop preventable deaths so keep safe keep healthy and see online