Protecting Healthcare Worker Wellness During COVID-19 with the Well-Being Index

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to threaten the well-being of our medical workforce, health systems, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations are searching for the most efficient and effective ways to support their staff. The psychological stress of the pandemic has exacerbated the existing health crisis of clinician burnout and distress, and leaders understand that immediate action must be taken to mitigate the harmful impact on provider mental health.

As a validated tool designed by physicians at Mayo Clinic to identify an organization's most-distressed groups and provide immediate, customized support, the Well-Being Index has been the first choice for many. In this time of uncertainty, wellness leaders need a way to get an immediate and accurate pulse on the well-being of their staff. The Well-Being Index offers a trusted self-assessment tool that takes less than a minute to complete, valuable resources to improve wellness, and institutional reporting for leaders to direct their strategic interventions. Read on to learn how the Well-Being Index can protect the health and wellness of your staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Measuring Well-Being and Distress

The Well-Being Index is a comprehensive online assessment tool designed to measure six dimensions of distress and well-being among physicians, nurses, APPs, residents, medical students, pharmacists, and general healthcare staff. Below are just a few of the aspects of the tool that make it an incredibly effective option for supporting mental health during the pandemic, when our healthcare heroes need it most:

• Quick rollout
  Organizations need a solution that can offer support immediately while providing ongoing data to improve and grow future initiatives. Once licensed, the Well-Being Index can be launched at your organization in a matter of weeks with the helpful guidance of our dedicated experts. 

• Affordable and flexible
  The global pandemic has placed unprecedented financial strain on healthcare organizations. Many institutions have been forced to cut budgets in a variety of areas, including wellness programming. We understand that prioritizing provider well-being cannot wait, and so we've developed unique solutions with pricing customized to fit your needs. Contact a Well-Being Index Expert today to discuss Pilot Program and pricing opportunities.
• Dedicated support
  Unlike surveys that simply supply access to the questions and scoring, the Well-Being Index provides expert support to help you utilize the tool to its full potential, including one-on-one training, custom resource planning, rollout coaching, institutional wellness consulting, reporting reviews, and more.
• Evidence-based
  Now more than ever the health and well-being of our medical professionals is being threatened. And healthcare leaders need accurate data to inform strategic, evidence-based tactics. The Well-Being Index is trusted by over 600 institutions around the world to gather such data and can be used to improve your wellness programming as well. 

Impactful Features for Providing Context

It is the Well-Being Index's unique features that make it the ideal tool for measuring COVID-19's impact on the mental health of your staff and improving their well-being. Included among these features is the ability to add several custom demographic questions to the assessment. Institutions may ask participants if they have been displaced or moved to a different department due to COVID-19. The yes-or-no response coupled with the participants well-being score from the rest of the assessment provides organizations with valuable insight that can direct operations and policies to better serve the needs of providers.

In addition to custom demographic questions, organizations can pose process improvement questions to gather COVID-19-related data and specific recommendations from participants on how to improve conditions. As with all assessment responses, the data gathered from the Well-Being Index is entirely confidential and anonymous and is provided to the organization in de-identified, aggregate reporting. 

Well-Being Index in Use to Combat COVID-19 Distress

In a recent interview on the High Impact Physician podcast hosted by Sandy Scott, Chief Medical Officer of CommonSpirit Health Arizona Division Keith Frey, MD, MBA, discussed how they are using the Well-Being Index during COVID-19.

"We’ve chosen at the national level a vetted product called the Well-Being Index," said Dr. Frey. The tool offers participants "a chance to quickly use a validated score to test their burnout risk. If they’re really struggling with fatigue or relationship issues, the app points them to some resources."

In the interview, Dr. Frey also described how COVID-19 interrupted CommonSpirit's planned rollout, and how they decided it was important to provide it to their clinicians during the pandemic. "We decided in the month of May that the pandemic is not going away, and we really have to roll out something quickly to monitor the overall health, or lack thereof, of our workforce. That has been very useful. Earlier today, I was showing a large group of national leaders our early experience with the first thousand physicians who have signed up over the last three weeks, and we’re beginning to see some of the hot spots that we can begin to address."

Learn More

For more information on how the Well-Being Index can be used to protect the mental health and wellness of your staff, contact a Well-Being Index Expert today. Thank you for your commitment to improving clinician well-being. It will take dedicated leadership, purpose-driven tools, and evidence based tactics to improve conditions and reduce distress, but together we can prioritize well-being and Go Beyond Burnout.