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Project Name: Health and Public Safety Workforce Resiliency Training Program (U3N)
Applicant Title: SAMUEL MERRITT UNIVERSITY
Abstract Text: Using the Stress First Aid model and leveraging wellness initiatives/resources already in place, Samuel Merritt University’s (SMU) Stronger Together: Partnered Resilience and Trauma Recovery Project will address burnout among student nurses, faculty, and staff and in our partner, rural, safety net clinic system, Brighter Beginnings (BB). It builds sustained resilience and mitigates harm related to the Covid-19 pandemic via the model. This validated approach posits that prolonged distress can result in loss of function even among those trained to manage emergent/critical conditions. By proactively addressing stress reactions using this model, participants can be made whole after rare/unprecedented phenomena (like a pandemic) exceeding normal capacity for managing crises. SMU is expanding/formalizing its current efforts across a continuum of holistic, skill-building activities promoting growth/healing among those who serve and those learning to enter the field of nursing. SMU’s project includes resources to bring healthcare students and healthcare employees along a wellbeing continuum from the reacting, injured, and ill columns back into the ready column through targeted supports/training and through changes to university and healthcare workplace culture and to the healthcare curriculum. We provide opportunities for role modeling, personal growth, dialogue between SMU and BB staff; encouraging ascent on the nursing ladder for both groups leading to increased interest in safety net employment where this specialized training could be best used. Available to 500 unduplicated participants across SMU’s College of Nursing and employees at BB clinics, measureable objectives include Improved Quality of Life via Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 Scale; Improved Patient Care via Wellbeing Index survey; Reduced Turnover/Intention to Leave (especially among ethnic/racial minority providers and trainees) via Turnover Intention Scale; Prevention of Sentinel Events evidenced by a reduction compared to a pre-project baseline measure at SMU and partner sites; Retention of 80% of clinical staff at BB; Increased BB unlicensed staff entering pre-health classes (or nursing education program). SMU will fully-realize the “BeWell” curriculum, currently in place across SMU, while extending lessons learned and opportunities to the communities that support our students with clinical learning opportunities. The 3-year plan encompasses training in the proactive recognition of distress across stakeholder levels from the personal to the overarching structures informing and challenging wellbeing. Year 1 begins with “self-awareness training” expanding to “local response training” in Year 2 and “advocacy training” in Year 3. Throughout the growth-promoting process, we’ll provide access to trauma-informed counseling for all participants, while building their ability to adopt and incorporate these validated, resiliency-building approaches into their own practice. It addresses priority underserved patient and healthcare workforce populations in community clinics and among nurses and CA nursing students. SMU campuses are in Medically Underserved Areas or Health Provider Shortage Areas. BB clinic partners are a Federally Qualified Health Center look-alike and site of HRSA National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment as an HPSA. STRONGER TOGETHER will address burnout/retention challenges of the current healthcare workforce while preparing a pipeline of diverse nurses committed to work in local, underserved communities. Through partnering with BB and the support of this award, our graduates will have training, exposure, and desire to provide trauma-informed care in MUAs moving the needle on persistent health inequities among rural groups. Quarterly data collection, analysis for RCQI will enable refinements to interventions and delivery methods to meet changing needs and sharing of data with the HRSA grantee cohort.