Recovery Post – Coronavirus – Short and Long-term Approaches

17 Apr Recovery Post – Coronavirus – Short and Long-term Approaches

The Institute for Healthcare Excellence (IHE) partners with healthcare organizations to nurture relational skills necessary to create a culture that embraces trust, respect, compassion, and teamwork–creating an environment where quality safety, and efficiency can flourish.  Through this work, physicians, nurses, and the caregiver team reconnect to purpose and restore joy to the practice of medicine.  The result of the culture-transforming work is a restoration of humanity to medicine.

It is heartwarming to learn about the readiness and resilience many organizations across the country have demonstrated as we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, a recent Boston Globe article entitled “Post-coronavirus, how will we address the trauma health care workers have suffered?” by Connie M. Ulrich and Lillian S. Brunner from the University of Pennsylvania articulates the many challenges facing American Medicine during the upcoming months. The following excerpts from the article summarize these challenges.

“It is heartbreaking to hear about the emotional turmoil of health care clinicians who are fighting on behalf of COVID-19 patients.  They are using their voices to tell us their raw and embattled stories of front-line challenges…Hospital administrators and others must begin now to think about the short- and long-term mental health implications for this morally courageous group of nurses, physicians, and other front-line workers…Today this grief is cumulative.  With about 1,000 US COVID-19 patients dying each day since April 1, the loss after loss of patients, including their colleagues, is overwhelming.  Nurses and physicians are also grieving the loss of human contact with family and friends who often serve as a shield and sounding board for their day -to-day work-life experiences. As the pandemic slows, hospital administrators, educators, researchers, and others must begin to develop and implement interventions to address the trauma and psychological damage sustained by health care workers on the front lines.”

In addition, in many areas of the country where we have been successful in “flattening the curve”, different stressors have surfaced that healthcare organizations have never experienced.  Dr. Adam Breslow, President and CEO Children’s Primary Care Medical Group in San Diego states, “Our offices are mostly empty and some of the providers have agitation of “sitting on the sidelines”.  There’s lots of guilt regarding not doing enough.  Combined with likely dramatic loss of income and general fear of catching COVID-19, there’s a bit of discouragement around here.”

To meet the short-term challenges facing healthcare organizations, IHE has developed four (4), 60- minute interactive programs using a virtual platform to help physicians, nurses, and healthcare leaders navigate the immediate challenges, including:

1. Human-Centered Leadership–How Do We Lead Effectively In A Virtual Environment?
2. Emotional Thriving–What Is It and How Do We Achieve It?
3. Achieving Peak Performance In Stressful Times–The Power Of Feed-Forward
4. Building Trust and Engagement–The Power of Gratitude

Please contact Jennifer Krippner or William J. Maples, M.D. by email at info@iheteam.org or call us at (904) 834-7408 if you have interest in engaging in one or more of these programs.

As the pandemic slows and we reach the other side of the mountain, IHE will be conducting a “Fireside Chat” webinar with national thought leaders in late May to define and outline potential solutions to navigate the long-term challenges.  Please watch for notifications about this “Fireside Chat” webinar.

Thank you for everything you are doing to successfully navigate this treacherous journey.