Htel-Dieu CEO opens up about 'mental andspiritual exhaustion' of COVID-19 pandemic

The CEO of Windsor'sHtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is sharing her experience with pandemic burnout in the hopes of encouraging others to take care of themselves.

Janice Kaffersaid she was eating right and getting exercise in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,but those habitswent by the wayside.

"Eventually I hit the proverbial 'wall' andsleep became a memory, my fatigue turned to short tempered andI found myself struggling to find any joy in the day to day," she wrote in a recent post on LinkedIn.

After not taking a proper dayoff in more than eight months, Kaffer realized throughher"fog of mental andspiritual exhaustion" thatshe needed to take some vacation, which she recently did.

"I'm a strong and capable woman who is freely admitting I'm not a superhero. I hope this post gives others the 'permission' to say out loud you feel that too," she wrote.

"We have months to go andwe must take care of ourselves in order to take care of all the others that need us."

Kaffer's wordshave struck a chord online.The post has attracted dozens comments, some from others inhealth-care fieldwho expressed similar sentiments about the devastating toll the pandemic has had on them personally.

Kaffer said it's important for leaders within the health-care field to talk about the exhaustion they're facing because it serves to validatewhat employees are experiencing.

"The frontline workers inhealth care have been through hell and back and you know, in manyways, it's a small group you can talk to about that," she said in an interview on CBC Radio'sWindsor Morning.

The pandemic has sparked renewed concern over the mental wellbeing of health-care workers, who are seeing the toll of COVID-19up close every day.

A recent survey found96 per cent oflicensed practical nurses polled in Ontario are finding their daily work "exponentially more stressful" due to COVID-19, and a third are considering leaving the field.

While her post was largely directed toward health-care workers, Kaffer said she's heard from people outside the field who are feeling burnout as well.

So what did Kaffer do on her recent week off? Kafferadmits it may sound silly, but she did Lego.

Shecame across sets of the blocks belonging to her grandkidsand began to finish them,findingthere was something "really satisfying" about it.

By the end of the week she had completed over 30, including some "vintage" ones dating back to when her son was a child.

"It was a very oddly satisfying week, taking the mess that was the big box of Legosand putting it into a nice, neat organizedand playable situation for my grandchildren," she said.