The Challenge: Health care is in no short supply of emotionally taxing and traumatic incidents that drain an employee’s resilience. When frontline staff are exposed to traumatic events, they often feel too busy with patient care activities to take time to debrief and recover. Instead, they opt into the “I’m fine” culture, either forgoing emotional support or relying on personal coping mechanisms that might not be healthy or sufficient.
The Organization: Main Line Health is a five-hospital health system headquartered in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, serving portions of Philadelphia and its western suburbs.
The Approach: Psychological first aid is a type of emotional support often used by disaster relief organizations. Implementing the same approach, Main Line created a psychological first aid team to help support staff in the immediate hours following trauma. The goals are to reduce initial distress caused by trauma, enhance coping strategies, and actively connect individuals with ongoing support services.
The Result: The psychological first aid team increased availability of immediate emotional support services and increased employee assistance program (EAP) utilization by staff and first responders. It also increased manager awareness of their staffs’ emotional states and helped them feel more equipped to support their staff during times of distress.