New Hampshire Nursing News - December 2020

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Page 20 • New Hampshire Nursing News December 2020, January, February 2021 Quick Fixes for 10 Big Budget-Blowing Mistakes Valerie Edwards Mutual of Omaha Advisor Valerie.edwards@mutualofomaha.com 678-672-0301 Look at these top money mistakes…and learn ways to avoid or fix them. 1. Estimating Income and Expenses Instead of Tracking Them To make a realistic budget, you need to know exactly how much money you have coming in and going out every month. To accurately measure costs, review at least six months of bills, bank statements, and credit card statements. That will help you spot expenses that don’t occur regularly. It lets you see how much some payments vary from month to month, so you can calculate an average. 2. Using Credit to Spend More Than You Have Using credit cards to make purchases that you can’t afford is a double-hit to your budget. Fix: Every time you use your credit card, set aside the money as if you’d used cash. When the bill comes, you’ll have cash to pay the full balance and you won’t end up paying interest on everyday purchases. 3. Ignoring ‘Auto Pilot’ Expenses Do you have subscriptions to publications you aren’t reading anymore? Are you still watching cable, or have you switched to Netflix? Getting rid of auto-expenses that no longer fit your life, can free up space in your budget. 4. Keeping Savings and Checking Accounts in the Same Bank It’s easy for money to flow the wrong way when savings and checking accounts are in the same bank. If transferring money from savings into checking is as simple as a mouse click, it can happen all too often. And using savings to pay regular household bills because you over spent will quickly deplete your nest egg. 5. Making It Too Easy to Spend Money One-click check out … Amazon Prime … Apple Pay… all of these effortless payment systems — make it so easy to spend money. When you’re trying to stay on budget, adding a layer of difficulty to your spending makes you less likely to buy things you don’t need. So, turn off one-click, don’t “store” your credit card information for online accounts. 6. Forgetting about Emergencies Emergencies happen all the time. Your washing machine goes on the fritz, for example. If your budget isn’t prepared to handle the unexpected, you could find yourself in financial hot water. The fix: Include “emergencies” as an expense category in your budget every month. 7. Keeping Up with Technology Upgrades Frequent tech upgrades make the latest, greatest versions seem like must-haves. Anything that was working for you yesterday — your laptop, your smartphone — is just as good today, even if the tech companies say it isn’t. Sometimes, simply updating software or adding memory can be all the upgrade you need. 8. Not Tailoring a Budget to Your Life Your budget should reflect your finances and goals. For example, if your daily Starbucks run makes life “worth living,” that’s not the expense to cut, no matter what all the experts say. 9. Not Considering Income Budgeters tend to focus on cutting expenses. It’s sometimes easier to increase income, or cash flow. Some examples: • Lower tax withholding. If your last refund was more than $1,000, reducing your withholding taxes may be worth looking at in order to free up some extra cash. • Renegotiate with vendors. If your bank charges you for checking and ATM usage, ask them to remove those fees. If they won’t budge, move your money to a friendlier bank. 10. Failing to Budget for Life Insurance Life insurance often gets the axe when families are building budgets. But consider this: If money is too tight to fit life insurance into your budget, what happens to the family finances if you or your spouse die? The Bottom Line You’ll be amazed how much you can save when you plug leaks that are draining your budget. And by fixing or avoiding these ten big mistakes, you’ll have more room in your spending for occasional splurges. Two St. Anselm College nursing students were recipients of the Susan D. Flynn Oncology Fellowship. Erin Sargent ’21 and Jenna Morrison ’21 spent their summers at Wentworth- Douglass Hospital/Seacoast Cancer Center gaining handson experience in oncology nursing. The fellowship aims to mentor aspiring nurses with career interests in oncology and cancer treatment. As a part of their fellowship, Sargent and Morrison also conducted “evidence-based” quality improvement projects, and presented the results. Sargent’s research project titled “Providers’ Perceptions of Palliative Care: Earlier is Always Better,” focused on the timing of palliative care for oncology patients at Wentworth-Douglas. Her research concluded that palliative care was a successful method of treating oncology patients and could even help identify distressing symptoms when utilized early in the treatment process. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) granted 10-year accreditation to the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and 5-year accreditation to the Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) of Granite State College. ED Note: News from nursing schools, faculty, students or alumni are welcome. Please direct submissions to office@nhnurses.org with NHNN in the subject line.
December 2020, January, February 2021 New Hampshire Nursing News • Page 21 I Give You Permission to Fall Apart By Sherry Stofko, MSN, RN Reprinted with permission from Nevada RNformation August 2020 issue denial, anger, sadness, isolation, and boredom. For healthcare workers, we have the privilege of adding in several heavier emotions: It’s during times like these when we discover if our coping mechanisms and resilience are strong enough to withstand the chaos and uncertainty. Dear fellow nurse: I give you permission to be anxious, fearful, angry, broken-hearted. I free you of your unwavering sacrifice, loyalty, grit, and determination. I am granting you liberty to experience your brokenness, exhaustion, overwhelm, and grief. I encourage you to drop into your shadow emotions and to let them out with a death wail or Irish funeral cry in the open Nevada landscape. I give you permission to fall apart. Our lives took an unprecedented turn in mid- March, one we never anticipated, but certainly now find as no surprise: a respiratory-spread, communicable disease passed effortlessly around our globally-connected world and “suddenly” rocking the human race. How could “we” not have had forethought and been ready for this? Clearly, we were not prepared in any way; we were not equipped with PPE, with governance and policy, or with coping mechanisms. In my 25 years as a hospital-based RN, I have never experienced such widespread risk, fear, uncertainty, misinformation, rapid change, and lack of strong leadership, let alone all of this concurrently. For many, the associated emotional roller coaster involves • Shock: “How is this happening in the United States in 2020?” • Betrayal: “They want us to wear the same mask for a week?” • Envy: “Stop complaining that you’re bored at home when I’m getting pummeled at work.” • Frustration: “If I get one more 500-word email about another new policy, I might crack!” • Fear: “What if I bring it home to my family?” • Exhaustion: “I can’t bear to drag myself in there again tonight.” • Terror: “The nightmares and insomnia are killing me.” • Grief: “What happened to my old life?” • Guilt: “I wish I could do more.” All of these reactions are completely normal during a disaster, a global catastrophe, a pandemic, or any crisis event. The issue here is that this is not merely an incident; it’s ongoing with no clear end in sight. Our stress levels, and therefore our cortisol and epinephrine levels, are chronically elevated. We are living in our sympathetic nervous systems - freeze, fight, or flight. We spend most of our time trapped in a limbic hijack. As nurses, we have no refuge – both work and home are incredibly stressful. Spotlight on the Healthy Nurse 2020 And they are. My dear healthcare brothers and sisters, we are enduring. It may not be pretty; in fact, it is probably embarrassingly messy. There should be no shame in it. Times are really tough. Nothing is ideal. But we are enduring. We are fluctuating through the stages of grief and, ever so slowly, we are moving towards acceptance and maybe even finding meaning in it all. During this time, be gentle with yourself. Reach out for help. Finally make that counseling appointment. Find a support group. Journal. Share. Practice selfcompassion. Scream out loud in the woods. When I feel emotionally flooded, I find calmness in pausing for a few seconds, then incorporating the acronym “RAIN.” It stands for: • Recognize what is happening: thoughts, behaviors, emotions. • Allow the experience to just be there without trying to change anything. • Investigate what you are feeling with curiosity and non-judgement. • Nurture yourself with self-compassion and selfcare (Brach, 2013). Perhaps all this falling apart can help us come together… together with our loved ones, with our co-workers, with other nurses nationally. It is time to prioritize our self-care and strengthen our resilience as nurses and as humans. Now, we ought to finally demand our employers recognize and mitigate the effects of work-related trauma on the mental wellbeing of their employees. We must band together, focusing on what is important in our field: safety, wellness, and solidarity of nurses, which inevitably and undeniably leads to improved safety and wellness of the patients in our care and in our communities. On the evening of Thursday, September 10, 2020, the Commission on Nursing Practice and the New Hampshire Nurses Association hosted the inaugural Spotlight on the Healthy Nurse. This new event replaced the Healthy Nurse Scholarship 5K & Health Fair. Proceeds from the event were donated to the Healthy Nurse Scholarship Fund. Over thirty members and guests attended this 100% virtual event. Amy Guthrie, MS, RN, spoke on Resiliency and Annabel Beerel, PhD, MBA, MA spoke on Mindfulness and Meditation. Guthrie discussed the characteristics of stress and how it impacts our lives. She shared the aspects of a stress-hardy personality, strategies for reducing stress and explained the mind-body connection and its relationship to stress reduction. She also provided participants with several worksheets to measure their personal vulnerability to stress and identify satisfying activities. is, how to develop it, and how it helps us become more resilient among its many other benefits. Beerel ended her talk with strategies for developing one’s own practice of mindfulness and meditation. Dr. Annabel Beerel is the founder and President of the New England Women’s Leadership Institute, an organization that helps women advance in their careers and advises on organizational leadership capacity building. Let us all give each other permission to fall apart during this time. In the falling, I encourage us to explore ways to cushion the fall. And in our collective falling apart, let us “fall forward together.” References: Brach, T. (2013). The RAIN of self-compassion. https:// www.tarabrach.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/RAINof-Self-Compassion2.pdf Chisholm, C., Personal conversation, 5/6/2020 Moskowitz, M. (2020). Emotional world of healthcare providers. https://www.whiteboardpsychology.com/ emotions-of-healthcare Amie Guthrie, MS, RN, Director of Continuing Nursing Education at Saint Anselm College. Beerel explained the concepts of mindfulness and meditation, providing examples through story telling. She spoke on the healing power of breathing and the concept of self-compassion: what it Both presentations were well received based on the participant questions and responses via the post event evaluation, rating both speakers as 3.96 out of 4.0 for knowledge on the subjects presented, and over 3.8 out of 4.0 on the organization and clarity of content. Collectively, over 90% of the participants rated their confidence as high on using the tools provided to begin or strengthen their reflective. The presentations are posted on the NHNA website, on the Commission on Nursing Practice: Spotlight on the Healthy Nurse webpage: https://nhnurses.nursingnetwork. com/page/95009-spotlight-on-the-healthynurse-program
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New Hampshire Nursing News - December 2020

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