wellbeing – Anesthesia Guidebook

In this podcast, Matt Zinder, MS, CRNA, CH walks us through a fifteen-minute guided relaxation session that is sure to leave you feeling refreshed and renewed. You should try this at home, on your lunch break or to help you go to sleep at night. Get to a place where you can close your eyes and tune out distractions. Hopefully, you’ll find yourself relaxed and refreshed, ready to move forward with renewed energy or simply fast asleep.

Matthew Zinder, MS, CRNA, CH has worked in some level of healthcare for close to 25 years, starting as an EMT in a volunteer fire station. Matthew owns and operates the Maryland-based mobile anesthesia practice Zinder Anesthesia, LLC, that has been in business since 1984. It consists of 20 practitioners and covers 50 locations throughout the state of Maryland.

Matthew speaks at many professional conferences, both nationally and internationally, involving topics such as stress management, business of anesthesia, hypnosis, and the practice of anesthesia. Matthew also has an active hypnotherapy practice that caters mainly to healthcare providers. He is the founder and director of Maryland Emergency Response, a disaster relief 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that works to aid victims following natural and/or man-made disasters. Matthew is currently the District IV director for the Maryland Association of Nurse Anesthetists.

Check out episode #55 – How to Be Well During the Pandemic where Matt and I talk about the stress management and mindfulness for healthcare providers in more detail. Be well!

Meditation apps:

10% Happier – healthcare providers get a free 6 month membership in light of the pandemic. 10% Happier has guided meditation and stress management content. Email care@tenpercent.com, let them know you’re a healthcare provider and they will give you instructions for accessing the content.

Insight Timer – 35,000 free guided meditations.

Books (for your self-quarantined downtime):

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD

10% Happier by Dan Harris

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris

The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky

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Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky is a book explaining the physiology of chronic stress and techniques for managing it. Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Matt Zinder recommends this book, saying, “It’s the seminal text on stress. This author describes to minute detail what stress is, what stress does to the body and ends with some techniques for managing stress.” Image retrieved from https://animals.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/2068315/.

This podcast was originally published on From the Head of the Bed on March 17, 2020. That was during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, in December 2021, as the pandemic has stretched out nearly 2 years, we’re revisiting Matt Zinder’s advice on how to be well and cope with the stress and change that the pandemic has brought.

Matt walks us through several techniques for stress management and mindfulness in this podcast. This episode, and the one to follow, where Matt actually guides us through a 10-minute spoken meditation, are just as helpful if not more so now as they were nearly 2 years ago. Just this week, my local health system in Maine has been hit harder with COVID-19 patients than at any time in the pandemic. Our local level-1 trauma center is completely full with patients. We’ve suspended all surgical cases with the exception of true emergencies. Just today, we stood up an emergency ICU/IMC unit in one of our PACUs to help alleviate the strain on our regular ICU staff and build capacity.

After each wave that comes & goes in the pandemic, another one seems to follow. This has resulted in fatigue, stress, burnout and frustration in many healthcare workers. Tens of thousands of healthcare works have either left their jobs or hit the travel circuit. The reasons they are motivated to quit or take travel assignments are complex and multifactorial. However, this phenomenon in the middle of the pandemic has exacerbated the staffing crisis and strained health systems to levels not seen in modern times. Responding to COVID-19 and its variants with vaccines, boosters and other therapies is crucial but only one part of addressing the broader healthcare crisis in the US. Systemic change is needed. Research shows that about 80% of individual burnout can be attributed to factors that need to be addressed at the organizational or system level. While it’s important to recognize that and put energy and attention into creating more functional organizations and healthcare systems, this podcast is about what we can do as individuals to bolster our resiliency during the pandemic.

Matthew speaks at many professional conferences, both nationally and internationally, involving topics such as stress management, business of anesthesia, hypnosis, and the practice of anesthesia. Matthew also has an active hypnotherapy practice that caters mainly to healthcare providers. He is the founder and director of Maryland Emergency Response, a disaster relief 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that works to aid victims following natural and/or man-made disasters. Matthew has also served as the director for the Maryland Association of Nurse Anesthetists.

Matt Zinder has made his email address public for questions, comments or speaking engagements: zinderllc@gmail.com