Chocolate Brain is a nurses way of thinking, advocating, and supporting individuals and organizations one shift at a time. One shift in thinking, enabling, teaching, mentoring, and guiding recommended best practices for trauma-informed, evidence-based, systems focused healthy work environments, and healthcare worker well-being.

continuing education services include individual and organizational well-being information and training.

We believe that playing your song is a way to enhance well-being through music and use lyrical parodies to change your mental relationship of stories. We hear you and want to empower you with a microphone. After all, when your brain is stressed, it is making things up anyway, why not make it sound good? Terrible can be tuneful. Harm can be harmonious. Sometimes when we try to advocate for change, we are silenced, or our voices are stifled. Theraoke provides the means to amplify not minify. Your voice. Your perceptions. Your thoughts. Your feelings. We need support, why not be in the form of backup singers?

Dancing in Chocolate Rain to Chocolate Brain

Chocolate Brain started with an idea….the night before my daughter’s first day of kindergarten, she was nervous. Rightfully so. We talked about how our brains think about things, and she compared her nervousness to dancing in chocolate rain. If rain was chocolate, how exciting a storm would be to go out in. Then she said, what if we could also bring that into our brains whenever we wanted. Making things better on the outside and inside.

Chocolate Brain

Connection between Combat and Operational Stress and Well-Being

While deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, Ellen used and trained stress first aid (SFA) and the principles of combat and operational stress to work provide individual and organizational care at all levels. By assessing needs, holistic interventions were catered to teams and units, which aligns directly with well-being and healthcare needs.

JoEllen “Ellen” Schimmels is hear to help nursing, one shift at a time. Empowering individuals and organizations to implement and sustain trauma informed, evidence based, healthy work environments. Ellen has been a nurse since 1998, and has worked in a variety of clinical, administrative, academic, and strategic settings. During her 20+ years active duty in the US Army, she advocated, mentored, and implemented system based changes across the military health system. She was selected as the psychiatric nursing consultant to the Army Surgeon General. She made instrumental individual and organizational improvements to policy, and procedures, increasing the field, and advocating for physically and psychologically safer, evidence based, making a difference. A consummate nursing advocate, she has presented and published on nurse well-being, mental health, substance use issues, and suicide. She has been a proponent of creating protective healthcare environments for well over two decades, using trauma-informed nursing practices that distinguishes her in the field.

Selected References

Aiken, L. H., Lasater, K. B., Sloane, D. M., Pogue, C. A., Fitzpatrick Rosenbaum, K. E., Muir, K. J., McHugh, M. D. (2023). US Clinician Wellbeing Study Consortium. Physician and Nurse Well-Being and Preferred Interventions to Address Burnout in Hospital Practice: Factors Associated With Turnover, Outcomes, and Patient Safety. JAMA Health Forum, 4(7), e231809. doi: 10.1001/jamahealthforum.2023.1809.

Morganstein, J. C., West, J. C., Schimmels, J., & Benedek, D. M. (2020, April 27) Response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: What will it take? Psychiatry, 1-6. doi: 10.1080/00332747.2020.1750928

Naegle, M.A., Kelly, L.A., Embree, J.L., Valentine, N., Sharp, D., Grinspun, D., Hines-Martin, V.P., Crawford, C.L., & Rosa, W.E. (2023, March/April). American academy of nursing consensus recommendations to advance system level change for nurse well-being. Nurs Outlook, 71(2), 19. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.outlook.2023.101917

National Academy of Medicine. 2022. National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26744.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25521.

Nurse Staffing Task Force. Nurse Staffing Task Force Imperatives, Recommendations, and Actions. American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and American Nurses Association; 2023. https://www.nursingworld.org/~49df86/contentassets/568122c62ddc44bea03b11a71f240a50/nurse-staffing-task-force-imperatives-recommendations-and-actions-1.pdf

Owen, R. D., & Schimmels, J. (2020). Leadership after a crisis: The application of Psychological First Aid. Journal of Nursing Administration, 50(10); 505-507. doi: 10.1097/NNA.0000000000000925. PMID: 32925662.

 Partners for Nurse Staffing Think Tank. (2022). Nurse Staffing Think Tank: Priority Topics and Recommendations. https://www.nursingworld.org/~49940b/globalassets/practiceandpolicy/nurse-staffing/nurse-staffing-think-tank-recommendation.pdf

Ruggeri, K., Garcia-Garzon, E., Maguire, A., Matz, S., Huppert, F. A. (2020). Well-being is more than happiness and life satisfaction: A multidimensional analysis of 21 countries. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 18, 192. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12955-020-01423-y

Schimmels, J., & Cunningham, L. (2021).  How do we move forward with trauma-informed care?  Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 17(4),405-411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2020.12.005

Schimmels, J., Groh, C., Neft, M., Wocial, L., Young, C., & Davidson, J. E. (2023). American Academy of Nursing expert panel consensus statement on leveraging equity in policy to improve recognition and treatment of mental health, substance use disorders, and nurse suicide. Nursing Outlook, 71(3), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2023.101970.

U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being. (2022). https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/workplace-mental-health-well-being.pdf

Watson, P., & Westphal, R.J. (2020). Stress First Aid for Health Care Workers. National Center for PTSD. Available on: www.ptsd.va.gov.

Disclaimer

Chocolate Brain was developed from a passion for nursing and nursing organizational and individual well-being. Education, training, professional development, mentoring, coaching, and other services are not therapy and are not considered clinical psychotherapy.

If you or someone you know needs help, reach out to the national lifeline at 988, the American Nurses Association Warmline at 858- 367-3001, or any number of national and local resources.