A Mental Health Support Success Story
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital systems nationwide have attempted to address these concerns with varied success. However, Mount Sinai in New York City — one of the hardest hit regions in the early months of the pandemic — set up a “recharge room” for frontline workers.
“In the course of an afternoon, I teamed up with a long-time collaborator of mine, a group called Studio Elsewhere — they create these immersive, multisensory experiences that are actually designed to change your physiology — to create rooms that can create all sorts of physiological effects within people,” Dr. David Putrino, co-director of Abilities Research Center and director of rehabilitation innovation, said in 2020 on the Road to Resilience podcast.
The room included artificial plants, projected HD nature images, and other elements that have been proven to “reduce blood pressure, decrease heart rate, [and] reduce stress hormones in the observer,” Putrino said. The room also featured music known to reduce stress and aromatherapy reminiscent of nature.
“What we’re seeing is that this experience creates enormous short-term stress relief,” Putrino said. “And that’s wonderful to see, and that’s been really gratifying to see that we’re actually having an impact on short-term stress. But on a broader perspective in terms of organizational wellbeing, taking the pulse of an organization, just hearing the responses to the room of, ‘It is so nice that the hospital system is doing this for us. It’s so nice to know that the system has our back.’ That really means a lot to a lot of people.”
How Can Employers Support Mental Health Among Nurses?
Just two years ago, a separate Trusted Health survey of nurses found that 95% believed their mental health wasn’t a priority in the healthcare industry or that it was a priority without enough support.
“My interpretation of these findings is that the majority of nurses see the conversations and campaigns about mental health as mere lip service,” wrote Danielle Bowie, Trusted Health’s vice president for clinical strategy and transformation, in a STAT opinion piece, “and believe that the health care industry has made little in the way of substantive changes to make nursing a more sustainable career path.”
Establishing a supportive environment is one way healthcare systems can improve the mental health of their nurses. This, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, includes:
- Participation in workplace decisions.
- Trust between management and workers.
Proactive and helpful supervisors that promote:
- Stress prevention,
- Psychological health,
- Support for productivity,
- A harassment-free workplace, and
- Enough time to complete tasks.
Similarly, a 2023 Journal of Medical Internet Research study found that an online resiliency training program, Resilience Enhancement Online Training for Nurses (REsOluTioN), was “acceptable, engaging, perceived as useful, and nurses were keen for it to be implemented to optimize resilience, psychological health, communication, and workplace environments.”
For nurses who don’t feel as if they have enough mental health support from their employer, that’s where organizations like the American Nurses Foundation come in. From its Stress & Burnout Prevention Pilot Program to a Well-Being Initiative, the organization aims to help practitioners as much as possible.
“What nurses need now is a radical transformation in all levels of support and resources they receive,” ANF Executive Director Kate Judge said in response to the Trusted Health survey. “We need everyone in positions of power and decision-making ability to invest in nursing. The fate of our health care system depends on it.”
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