After a stressful or traumatic on-the-job event, it’s common for health care workers to suffer emotional, mental, and/or physical effects. A multidisciplinary team at Chester County Hospital (CCH) has created a program to support their colleagues and help them through these challenging times. WeCare, a program which cares for health care providers, launched earlier this year.
Developed by Aneesha Dhargalkar, MD, an emergency medicine physician, and her administrative partners, Steve Barainyak, administrator/CEO of Turks Head Surgery Center – of which CCH is the majority owner – and Carli Meister, MSc (A), RN, director of patient experience and risk management, the program offers a tiered-level support system for health care providers and clinicians during a traumatic or distressing work-related incident. These events can include: patient death, loss of a co-worker, or abuse from a patient or their family, among others.
- TIER 1: Support involves immediate department heads, supervisors, and/or managers who can provide resources and allow the affected employee the time to talk and debrief.
- TIER 2: Secondary support includes a trained health care worker who has volunteered to provide emotional support.
- TIER 3: Support provides the affected employee with a psychologist or therapist.
Passionate about the emotional well-being of health care providers, Dhargalkar began researching ways to implement a hospital-wide initiative to bring mental and emotional health support tools and education to her colleagues in 2019. During her research she came across Susan Scott’s work on the For You program at the University of Missouri Health System (UMHS), which served as the inspiration for WeCare. The For You program was launched after Scott’s research into “second victim phenomenon” unearthed that nearly one in seven staff members at UMHS experienced patient events that caused personal anguish.
After reading Scott’s study, Dhargalkar began working with a committee – including Meister and Barainyak – to gain the support of the hospital’s management team to launch the WeCare program. The inaugural group has since expanded to include subcommittees to oversee training, recruiting, and the scheduling of support participants.
“Having this support system behind us and ensuring that we are taken care of from a mental and emotional standpoint is just as important to our well-being as our physical health,” said Dr. Dhalgakar. “Knowing that the WeCare team is here to help us through difficult events lifts a heavy burden that many of us would otherwise carry alone.”