Well-Being Services
March 2020 - October 2020

Team:
Dr. Carlos Rueda | Psychiatry Chair & CIO
David Kim | Director of Innovation
Tina Miles | Director of Behavioral Health
Lorei Cwerko | Director of Benefits

Topics:
Mental Health, Wellbeing, CoVID-19, Service Design, UI/UX, Communications Design

Our Process:
Defined: how might we proactively combat PTSD?
Learned: our teams need asynchronous access to different channels of assistance
Made: training, education & tele-consults

Summary

Early on into the COVID-19 pandemic, The Center for Innovation at SJH was concerned about the psychological trauma our doctors, nurses, and other first responders would have. These fears were corroborated from an early JAMA study in China, where researchers identified that among healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19, women, nurses, and frontline workers were at a higher risk of developing mental health diseases such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and distress.

We knew that burnout and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) were inevitable, the question was a matter of when, and we wanted to be ready.

Through the first COVID wave, we provided encouragement, education, a peer-to-peer training program, a tele-psych consult service, and a centralized mental health resource repository.

Good to Well

There is strong and growing evidence that work, health, and well-being need to be addressed together. Partnering with various departments, we developed strategies to help our employees excel in every facet of their lives: physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, and financially. Our goal was to provide a well-being platform that can be accessed anywhere.

Created by The Center for Innovation for SJH employees, the vision was to develop a platform that would extend to the communities we serve in Paterson, NJ.

We worked closely with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health to help employees navigate the complex set of emotions and experiences through Good to Well, a tele-psych service with mental well-being resources. The vision was to build a holistic mental well-being platform, but due to a lack of access to technology infrastructure, an MVP website was launched.

We found unique COVID-19 stressors for hospital, EMS and other First Responders and provided tailored resources to address:

• Identifying typical and atypical reactions

• Burn Out, Person/Role Conflict, Moral Injury and Secondary Traumatic Stress

• Impact on morale, team cohesion, and performance

• Task Saturation and Operational Stress

• Operational Stress Control: Strategies and techniques for coping

• Building personal and organizational resilience

• Sources of support of self and family

We designed and delivered resources, guides, and programs from April to June 2020, through the first COVID-19 wave of patients. As the need grew, we developed MVPs for a centralized platform culminating in the design, architecture, and development of internal and external resources. Due to internal technological limitations, www.goodtowell.com wouldn’t be launched until October 2020 via a paired-down website.

We have continued to support telehealth well-being consults with our Department of Psychiatry for our employees.

EMPLOYEE GUIDES FOR MENTAL HEALTH

First responders, hospital and healthcare workers, and others on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic are exposed to unique stressors and a potentially overwhelming demand for their assistance. In addition to extreme levels of operational and traumatic stress, these workers face the risk of moral injury and compassion fatigue.

Our programs introduced the various types of stress associated with a major public health crisis, as well as useful strategies and techniques for coping that can be applied within recognized crisis intervention frameworks, such as Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) and FEMA’s Crisis Counseling Program.

PEER-TO-PEER SUPPORT PROGRAM

The use of peer support has helped change the culture of mental health from illness and disability to health and ability. Peer support specialists are better at promoting hope and the belief in a possible recovery than their non-peer counterparts. Also, peer support interventions help reduce symptoms of depression. We developed education and a program with Psychiatry and Behavioral Health to provide Peer-to-Peer support training.

Of the various models for peer-to-peer programs, we focused on two: (1) one-on-one and (2) group support. This support can be delivered through multiple modes, including in-person, by phone, or over the Internet. A peer-to-peer program can apply and combine these models and modalities in various ways, offering a variety of options.

The Feedback

“Thank you for driving the idea and for the heartfelt words to all SJH employees. What was written was deeply meaningful and personal.”

”(This education) is very nicely done and will be helpful to the staff. In fact, at the prayer event yesterday someone was sharing with me that they were feeling angry about what was happening around them. Of course, I thought of these resources.”

”What you’ve done makes a difference and has helped me tremendously.”

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the speed of change for our system, but our existing infrastructures were not built to shift so quickly. SJH found that our approach to innovation is needed now more than ever. We must meet needs that evolve daily and a healthcare landscape that will never be the same.

Our learnings have informed our system’s strategy to bolster existing infrastructures and invest in supportive services.