Christine M. Silverstein
The Summit Center for Ideal Performance, USA
Title: History Lessons learned on how to promote Nurses’ Mental Health Today and Tomorrow, based on a Feedback Loop Analysis of Nursing during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Biography
Biography: Christine M. Silverstein
Abstract
Writer and philosopher, George Santayana, said “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” The same can be true of the global COVID-19 pandemic, where hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives and millions of people worldwide. This includes many nurses who died and those who experienced mental health issues, PTSD, and suicide as a result of enduring untenable stressors and horrific conditions on the front lines amidst political strife, unpreparedness of government public health officials, and inadequate personal protective equipment. In the absence of Federal support, nurses struggled internally to find ways to treat patients as persons and to communicate interpersonally. Santayana further espoused: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This harsh reality for the nursing profession demands an in-depth look back at pivotal events in nursing history that transpired during its foundational development in the 19th and 20th centuries and during the early pandemic within the microcosm of NYC, where Coronavirus first spiked in the US. Via a Feedback Loop Analysis, information will be gleaned as to what was learned, what nursing discarded indiscriminately, and what can be applied and implemented today to promote the mental health of nurses, holistically, in body, mind, and spirit, through science and Mind Power, and the use of coping and peak performance tools geared towards wellness in the 21st century.