(PHI is probably a nightmare, skipping straight to PHP)

Personal Health Plan for Sarah P

During her Integrative Whole Health visit, Sarah spoke at length with her primary care clinician about Personal Development, which emerged as a priority among the various components of proactive self-care (the green part of the Circle of Health). Her PHI made it clear that she has a lot of good ideas. When creating her Personal Health Plan (PHP) any of the following could have been added (though, of course, Sarah would in reality only choose one or two of these to work on initially.

Quality of work life. Sarah is doing well with this. She has great relationships with her colleagues and enjoys what she is doing. She will do more reading about burnout, as she knows she is at risk of this given that she takes care of a number of seriously ill people as a certified nursing assistant.

Resilience. She will review information on enhancing resilience and will focus on bringing a greater sense of meaning into her life.

Happiness. She recognizes that happiness matters a lot to her, but she has not been a particularly happy person since her divorce. She intends to work on that, mainly through reconnecting with her old church congregation and spending at least one night a week having family game night with her kids and their friends.

Hope and optimism. She feels optimistic overall and will continue to model that for her children.

Self-compassion. She will practice a Mindful Compassion exercise regularly to cultivate this, as she finds it to be challenging to feel good about herself. (The “Family, Friends, & Co-Workers” module has additional information.)

Forgiveness. She will review the “Forgiveness: The Gift We Give Ourselves” tool and start working on this in terms of how she feels about her ex-husband. She was relieved to learn forgiveness was in no way about condoning any of his past behaviors.

Gratitude. Sarah will identify three things she is grateful for every day as she drives home from work.

Random acts of kindness. Sarah does these frequently in her healthcare work.

Humor and laughter. Sometime down the road, perhaps in a month or two, she hopes to do a laughter yoga session with her care team at the hospital.

Creativity. She will begin scrapbooking again.

Work-life balance. While this is challenging for her, given all her obligations, she intends to take 20 minutes a day just for herself. She will check in with her clinical team about how that is going after two weeks.

Lifelong learning. Sarah is already planning to attend nursing school.

Leisure time and hobbies. She will start scrapbooking and having family game night, as noted above.