Three strategies to build baseline emotional support

Health care organizations have historically provided support to staff following major events that could cause trauma or grief, and potentially lead to PTSD. However, this immediate support is only part of the solution.

Most symptoms of PTSD surface within three months of a traumatic event, but some may not be evident until months or years later. That’s why organizations need to provide long-term resources in addition to in-the-moment support.

In particular, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical need for long-term support related to trauma and grief. And leaders—from executives to the front lines—need to play an active role in identifying staff who are struggling.

Baseline support following major events should include the following three components:

1. In-the-moment resources to help staff emotionally recover following potentially traumatic events:
   This type of emotional support must be timely and focus on staff wellbeing. Thus, clinical debriefing does not count here. If your organization does not have this type of support readily available to staff, we recommend training an internal team in psychological first aid.
2. Tactics to help leaders identify staff in need of extra emotional support:
   Remember, PTSD symptoms can occur years after a traumatic event, so leaders need to be able to recognize symptoms of emotional distress and feel equipped to talk to their staff about it. This isn’t easy for leaders to do, so we recommend creating structures to help them.
3. Promote long-term emotional support:
   Many organizations already have resources that can provide longer-term support to staff. However, these resources are often decentralized and staff do not know about them or how to access them. The single best thing to do is compile a list of all emotional resources available to staff and publicize it in multiple ways, including: providing it to all frontline leaders, posting it on a single intranet page, and sending the list via email following major emotional events.

See our emotional support resource library for resources dedicated to addressing trauma, grief, or PTSD.

Moral distress is a long-standing challenge in health care due to the ethical nature of the profession. Covid-19 has brought the issue of moral distress to the forefront. It’s been particularly important as some clinicians have had to face ethical decisions on how to allocate resources when there aren’t enough for everyone.

Individuals experience moral distress for a variety of reasons and respond in different ways. This variability—along with the ever-present ethical challenges of health care—make it challenging to prevent moral distress. When left unaddressed, moral distress can cause long-term damage, including moral injury, with symptoms that mirror burnout or PTSD.

While moral distress is a difficult challenge, the solution is relatively straightforward: give staff a safe space to discuss their experiences of moral distress. There are many ways to do this, so don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s less important how you do it, and more important to just do it. For examples of effective moral distress forums, see our emotional support resource library.

Many organizations are making progress on supporting staff with routine stress that’s commonly part of the health care profession. Despite more organization-wide support, one key challenge persists: staff and leaders know the importance of sustaining their own emotional wellness, but they often feel they don’t have time to take a moment for themselves. Frontline clinicians and staff, in particular, almost always prioritize patient care over self-care. Paradoxically, this constant prioritization of patient care over self-care, if left unaddressed, can lead to compassion fatigue.

If we want to encourage staff to prioritize their own wellness, they need self-care tools that are quick, accessible, and fit into their workflow. And they need to be reminded that there is no weakness in accessing these tools. By providing such tools, organizations combat the stigma around using these resources.

There are many types of emotional support resources that organizations can offer to address routine stress. Some will work well for all staff, while others are more targeted to specific groups, such as physicians and nurses. Routine emotional stressors ultimately affect all employees, not just those in patient-facing roles. So, it’s important to provide resources that reflect the diversity of roles within your organization. And given that one size does not fit all when it comes to emotional support, more is better here.

See our emotional support resource library for examples of everyday emotional supports.