Random Acts of Kindness Day This Week

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

 

Everybody wants to be happy. But this can sometimes seem like an elusive goal. Healthcare environments are still social distancing, and the staff wears masks.  Casual meals in the staff lounge and coffee breaks with colleagues are less common. We don’t have the same opportunities for social connection as before. Without them, finding joy in our work can be much more challenging. There are fewer conversations about what is good in the world, and fewer kudos are given to our colleagues. Nurse leaders struggle with team negativity, and turning it around isn’t easy.

Practicing kindness by giving compliments, doing something unexpected for others and recognizing can transform our workplaces and teams. Decades of research have shown that receiving a compliment, words of recognition, and praise can help individuals feel more fulfilled, boost their self-esteem, improve their self-evaluations, and trigger positive emotions. These positive downstream consequences of compliments make intuitive sense: Praise aligns with our naturally positive view of ourselves, confirming our self-worth.  Research even suggests that doing good for others is contagious. Now that’s a virus we should be able to get behind.

February 17th is celebrated as Random Acts of Kindness Day in the United States. Random Acts of Kindness Day was initiated in 1995 in Denver, Colorado, by a nonprofit organization called The Random Acts Of Kindness Foundation. The event spread to New Zealand nine years later, in 2004, and the observance of the holiday became increasingly widespread.  The holiday is devoted to promoting kindness, understanding the positive potential of large and small acts of kindness, and unifying us.

Why not use this opportunity to challenge staff to promote random acts of kindness to their colleagues, patients, and families?  There are some creative ideas here, but your staff will probably surprise you with even better ones. I especially like the idea of Kindness Bingo as a group activity – you can develop your unit kindness acts to include in the bingo game.

It all begins with us imagining a world where you can succeed by being nice. Where we all pay it forward. Where people look out for each other. It all starts with an act to begin to normalize the importance of kindness again in our work environments. The power of kindness can mitigate the ill effects of our increasingly divisive world.

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