The Role of Love in Critical Care Leadership: Liz Crowe

Does love have any place in critical care? If we love and care are we more vulnerable to burnout and compassion fatigue? Will we be identified as weak leaders, too ‘soft’ for the area? Are we supposed to love an environment full of carnage and suffering? Are we meant to ‘love’ our colleagues and see our team as an extended family? Should we ‘love’ our patients or is that a ‘boundary crosser’? Critical Care consistently looks internally to resolve the past and emerging problems when there is research across disciplines that will assist critical care environments to adapt to the changing landscape of ethics, new technologies, issues with teams and a need for leaders to be more than skilled clinicians. Love and humanism may hold the key? Drawing on theories and models that hold love and compassion at their core this talk will draw examples from couples counselling, family therapy, development of teams, acceptance and commitment therapy and some of the greatest leaders in history to provide an innovative framework that can create flourishing and wellbeing within critical care for both the patient and professional. Discover where love can take us in critical care. Exploring the developmental phases of love and critical care we can learn to use our passion and energy for the job as strength instead of as an allergen. We will be reminded from the greatest leaders of our time how to transform health care and working relationships into an environment of love, support and resilience. That if we can negotiate relationships with partners, in-laws, children and friends we have the skills and resources to manage, love and thrive at work. Love, connection and compassion have much to teach us, it is time we learned to listen