2022 Speaker Profile

Moderator:  Jonathan Ripp, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine, Medical Education and Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Dean for Well-Being and Resilience and Chief Wellness Officer, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Panelists:
Kerri Palamara, MD, Director, Center for Physician Well-being, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

Jonathan DePierro, Ph.D., Clinical and Research Director, Center for Stress, Resilience and Personal Growth, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Lauren Peccoralo, MD, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Well-being and Development, Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

It has become clear that building and supporting well-being in health care settings requires a multipronged approach including both system-level and individual-level interventions. Early data highlighted the pronounced psychosocial impact on frontline health care workers in the first peak of the COVID pandemic in April to May 2020, with one large-scale survey finding that 39% had positive screens for depression, anxiety, and/or posttraumatic stress disorder and that employees and trainees were not feeling safe at work and were suffering from significant moral distress. Therefore, it was imperative that healthcare institution leadership act swiftly to meet the needs of its staff, faculty, and trainees. Sustaining and meaningfully integrating these data-driven efforts, to include system-level interventions that enhance workplace efficiency and promote supportive cultures, while complementing individual supports and resources, is mission-critical to ensuring the health and well-being of health care institutions during and beyond the pandemic. Ensuring these programs endure and adapt to systems and individual needs through the COVID-19 recovery phase will facilitate post-traumatic growth for organizations and their employees.

This panel will open with a brief discussion of the needs of faculty, staff, and trainees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, as exemplified by 2 academic hospital systems, panelists will discuss a rational framework for a supportive response, comprising: 1) task force formation and needs assessment, 2) program design, implementation, and evaluation, and 3) strategic communication. Panelists will then highlight examples of coordinated structural and psychosocial supports for faculty, staff, and trainees provided during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with deployed interventions such as highly utilized “recharge rooms,” basic needs provisions, leadership support, training and coaching programs, buddy programs, large-scale spiritual care support programs, listening sessions, and at one institution, the opening of a Center focused on supporting the resilience and mental health of their workforce. The latter 20 minutes will allow participants to ask panelists questions about challenges faced and strategies useful in their efforts to address needs during the COVID 19 pandemic.

• Identify psychosocial needs and stressors of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic based on data from multiple cohort surveys

• Describe the meaningful integration of system-, and individual-level interventions during the pandemic

• Identify several efforts made by academic health care institutions to sustain innovations in workforce resilience during and beyond the pandemic

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