Is Ecological Awareness a Missing Link in Our Health Care System?

The connection between the environment and our wellbeing is an often-overlooked dimension of the wellness paradigm and yet, it is central to optimal health and the driver for other dimensions: emotional, mental, and physical health. Our healthcare workers are burnt out due to the nature of working in high stress hospital systems. Hospital employees have few workplace resources available for emotional support and wellness promoting interventions that include a focus on how our health relates to our environment. Healthcare professionals within a hospital system who are interested in receiving support through an ecological coaching alliance should have the opportunity to experience this resource. They may have their own challenges coping with stress, anxiety, new prognosis, treatment adherence, or recognizing a need for better preventive self-care.

Our healthcare system is starting to recognize the limits of focusing on symptom relief rather than on the cause of disease and prevention. Nature connection is largely absent in medical education and practically nonexistent in the patient-provider relationship. Spending time in nature is an important component of health because it involves meaning making, strengthening values, igniting purpose, brings us into the present moment, broadens our perspective, and helps us cultivate healthy relationships. Examples of nature-focused care embodied may be breath work by water, a wilderness walk, nature journaling and drawing, observing plant and animal life, or just whatever feels comforting and bring us into present moment awareness. Maybe we just want to lay down and BE.

There is a gap in universal and accessible nature-focused care and resources for our healthcare professionals and patients. Nature-focused coaching sessions can be offered to employees with immediate needs or long-term goals. The sessions can be accessible and cost-effective for all hospital employees. The value proposition for introducing this kind of care into our health system not only makes for happier and healthier employees, but also cultivates better care for patients. This proposition can also be positive for society as a whole.

Let’s support people and our health care professionals better.

Be Well,

Britt