The COVID Connections Support Group offers free virtual meetings for patients who are recovering from or experiencing lingering effects of COVID. The primary goal is to walk alongside patients on their journey of health, hope and healing.

BIDMC Stories is an annual storytelling event featuring staff to build a sense of community and connection, promote self-reflection and mitigate burnout. The theme in 2021 was “Defining Moments: The Stories That Shape Us,” for which six storytellers were selected from among 24 applicants.

The Employee Resource Group is a vehicle for clinical staff such as doctors, nursing, allied health professionals, environmental services workers, interpreters, and administers to engage and address the public health epidemic of racism. BIDMC initiated a speaker series and book club to support safety and build connections to address issues of racism and inequities in healthcare.

Creative Community Care consists of music experiences to enhance wellness for employees. Music meditations, drum circles, songwriting and movement are offered to departments in need of stress relief and team building. Sessions are offered in a group format for 10-30 minute intervals to provide release and connection.

The Creative Arts in the Rehabilitation Setting program is used to improve cognitive and sensorimotor functions, foster self-esteem and self-awareness, cultivate emotional resilience, enhance social skills and improve mental and physical health for patients during their time in rehab.

The Post-COVID Recovery Program offers personalized care for the recovery of COVID patients to enhance functioning and quality of life. The Post-COVID Recovery team includes physiatrists, neuropsychologists, psychologists, medical specialists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, and case managers.

The Connecticut Children’s Office of Faculty Development’s TiP program is a longitudinal, peer-based program supporting faculty physician hires who are joining the institution in their first job out of training. The year-long program structure consists of monthly facilitated meetings with peers from across the academic institution.

The DFCI Center for Spiritual Care’s Shared Journeys program is an interfaith discussion series for patients who identify as women providing supportive, non-judgmental space to share their sacred stories. Each session focuses on a particular spiritual theme and includes a speaker or activity, followed by small-group discussion and sharing.

ConnectShareCare is an online peer-to-peer facilitated support network created with community members, patients, care partners and staff at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth College. The goal is to help “care partners” (the name preferred by the group of serious illness caregivers the team worked with in designing the program) cope with the surprises that arise after the diagnosis of a serious illness and in bereavement by facilitating connections among people who have a shared lived experience.

EMCM’s BEE Award is awarded by the nursing department to support the caring, compassionate, and extraordinary work of all those who enable nursing to provide the very best care to their patients. Staff can be nominated by patients, nurses, visitors, and colleagues and are selected by a nurse leader each month.

The critical care staff at EMCM created Celebration of Life during the pandemic with one of their earliest COVID patients and his wife. The entire team, including nurses, physicians, patient care associates, respiratory therapists and pharmacists, met with the family to share smiles, laughter and tears.

Patients at EMCM receive a “Get to Know Me” card where they fill out information such as their preferred name and pronouns, music preferences, and things that make them feel stressed out or happy. Staff use these cards to relate to patients, help them feel more at ease, and provide a foundation for connection and support.

The Music Therapy: You’ve Been Tuned! program is facilitated by a nurse and a music therapist and includes staff and a local musician. Objectives of the program include promoting wellness, encouraging the expression of feelings, enhancing communication, supporting self-care, resilience and team building. Activities include mindfulness promotion activities, artistry trading cards, live music in the lobby and in selected patient care areas.

EMCM’s Renewal Carts were deployed in each patient care unit, as well as in the support services areas. Each cart is stocked with coloring sheets, aromatherapy, herbal teas, candy, stress balls and an iPod with calming programs.

The outpatient procedure center at EMCM collects non-slip socks to donate to individuals experiencing homelessness. The socks are collected from patients who do not wish to take them home, laundered and given to a local nonprofit organization that distributes them.

Staff developed a series of videos, radio interviews and podcasts to be released both on the staff intranet, internet, local news and radio stations for the “We Are in This Together” program. The goal was to reassure the community of Western New York during the COVID pandemic through education, coping skills, and hope.

Hartford HealthCare’s Well-Being Department developed a well-being cart initiative to support a culture that normalizes compassion, self-care and help-seeking. The carts include snacks, beverages, comfort items, aromatherapy and tip sheets about common wellness activities. Staff rounded the cart to more than 17 areas across the healthcare system.

The DEIJ Medical Education Taskforce is a learning community of committed individuals who have an interest in promoting social justice in healthcare and who are interested in developing new instructional skills to support their career growth as educators and clinicians. The program strives to help clinicians refine the essential skills required for effectively training medical learners to deliver compassionate, culturally responsive, patient-centered, and equitable care.

Holland Bloorview’s Humanistic Health Care Education and Training includes a full year, externally certified, solution-focused coaching program, a suite of workshops, and a course, known as collaborative behavior support, to aid healthcare professionals with their ability to confidently support positive client behavior. All of the offerings are founded on the fundamental principles of humanism to help healthcare providers shift from a perspective of fixing to a perspective of healing.

This multi-disciplinary Community Wellness Team provides resources, emotional support and creative arts therapy to discharged patients, family members of deceased patients and frontline staff. Initiatives include a 24/7 hotline, wellness stations, wellness phone calls, wellness rounds and wellness groups led by creative art therapists.

Care for the Caregiver is a comprehensive program designed to ease potential work environment stress for staff and faculty. It includes a peer support program, support groups, wellness activities, a weekly massage program and one-time financial grants to support staff.

The COVID Care Team had chronic care management nurses called all COVID patients discharged from the emergency department with oxygen or after administration of REGEN-COV. The program served 368 COVID patients in the community during the pandemic.

The COVID ICU Visitation program was created for patients in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator. The team scheduled in-person visitations that included preparing the visitor for what they might experience during their visit, showing them how to safely don protective equipment, and escorting the loved one to and from the patient’s room. When in-person visits could not be arranged, a labor pool rounded on all COVID patients using video technology to communicate with loved ones.

The PEQRI program is designed to highlight the intersection of quality, safety, well-being and experience. The objective of PEQRI is to elevate care and provide patients and caregivers with a safe, seamless and connected experience by capitalizing on the organization’s culture, leadership and analytics.

The Patient Pathology Consult program was created by Dr. Lija Joseph in order to fill a gap in patient care. Patients are shown images of their biopsy slides and have their pathology report explained to them so that they can better understand their diagnosis. The team has met with more than 150 patients to help them understand their disease process and deal better with difficult diagnoses.

The Destination Wellness program aims to promote resilience, engagement, recognition and safety of providers and caregivers. The goal is to increase compassion for patients, their families, community and staff through efforts such as workplace violence prevention, caregiver celebrations, Schwartz Rounds^® and post-code pauses.

Initially created for a local middle school, the Reflective Writing Workbook includes writing prompts with reflective images. The workbook was introduced at a Schwartz Rounds session at the hospital and later printed for wider distribution with the goal of creating a culture in which self-care is viewed as essential for the emotional and spiritual health of the healthcare community.

Local leaders and employee volunteers operationalized the Lavender Response Team to support colleagues after a stressful event. The program includes in-person support within 30 minutes, self-care items, brief interventions and follow-up for mental and emotional health needs. The Lavender Response Team meets regularly to understand trends in employee needs and opportunities for improvement.

Project DEAR is amulti-disciplinary team of facilitators trained to conduct clinical debriefings after critical incidents to improve team performance and reduce compassion fatigue. The project was expanded throughout all inpatient department areas, and feedback showed it helped with highlighting clinical strengths and addressing concerns. Phase 2 of the project included mental health follow-up known as CHAT (connecting, healing and achieving together).

Compassion Labs were created to provide a safe place for all NSW Health staff to come together, spend time in mindful contemplation and learn more about neuroscience. Participants were led through three virtual sessions focused on three topics: “Deepening Our Care for One Another,” “Self-Compassion” and “Practicing Gratitude.” More than 5,000 staff reported feeling rejuvenated after the hourly sessions.

The SEED Program was developed in the aftermath of the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire disaster and used participatory action methodology to create a well-being program of five staff-led initiatives that promoted healing, wellness, belonging and connection. Since its conceptualization, SEED has been implemented across a number of sites to train staff in wellness principles and to offer support during stressful change processes.

The Caregiver Wellness team is made up of clinical and non-clinical staff with the goal of optimizing wellness for caregivers with solutions tailored to their individual needs. The focus is on short moments of self-care throughout the day including art, music, stretch breaks and healthier food options.

The primary goal of PPICS was to identify and address the psychological needs of long-term COVID-19 inpatients by using a survey to evaluate the amount of distress and clinical concerns for each patient during their hospitalization. Voluntary participation was offered in a virtual support group that included other long-haul patients and a clinical psychologist facilitator.

The Spirit Circle is a group of multidisciplinary employees who are selected and trained to provide basic spiritual interventions with the guidance of the hospital chaplain. The team members are knowledgeable in the available spiritual resources in the hospital and model the importance of providing patient- and family-centered care.

The We Care Bags program provides patients who are admitted with known or suspected substance use disorder with a drawstring bag filled with items they can use to keep themselves busy while in the hospital and use to care for themselves outside of the hospital. Items in the bags include: first aid kits, socks, sunscreen, reusable water bottles, body bath wipes, gloves, hats, sunglasses, blank journals, pens, coloring pages, colored pencils, packs of playing cards, and cards with a handwritten message from staff.

Well Being Wednesdays are held twice a day every Wednesday in the Rady Children’s Hospital’s Healing Garden and offer snacks, refreshments, healing touch and canine care as an expression of gratitude to healthcare staff. Close to 500 employees visit Well Being Wednesday each week, which  are staffed by department leaders and the senior leadership team.

The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital quality of life and palliative care team collaborated with bereaved parents to design a multi-faceted program aimed at improving the quality of life for family members, caregivers, and hospital staff following the death of a child. Bereaved parents are involved in strategic program planning, development, and implementation of components of the program in order to experience healing and continued connection to their child.

Texas Health Resources planned a retreat to introduce and connect hospital Schwartz Rounds leaders within their healthcare system. The program’s theme was “Compassion Recharge,” and the goal was to maximize access to Schwartz Rounds programming and minimize operational burden on any individual hospital team by sharing Schwartz Rounds panels virtually across the system.

The forYOU team proactively provides emotional first aid to any healthcare provider, staff member, student learner or volunteer in clinical and non-clinical settings that has suffered as a result of an emotionally challenging work event. The forYOU Team’s motto is “Caring for Our Own” and has offered support to an average of 200 members of MU Health Care per year.

The Primary Palliative Care for Huntington’s Disease pilot program was developed to integrate primary palliative care with interdisciplinary, outpatient care for Huntington’s Disease. The program activities aim to establish a model of care in which patient-centered goals of care and quality-of-life are the foundation of care decisions from diagnosis onward and include medical care, personal responsibilities and decision-making, resources and financial planning and end-of-life care.

The Pause was started at UVA Health System in 2010 and is a practice of stopping and honoring a patient after death. It has now spread across the U.S. and around the world. Its secular nature allows the practice to be done in any setting with a diverse group of people with varied faiths or no religious associations.