Best Practice of the Month
Supporting Helping Professionals: Reducing the Impact of Workplace Stress

Healthcare and behavioral health professionals are focused on delivering the highest standard of care to those they serve. It is equally important the same high standards apply to professionals taking care of themselves and their teams.

During times of crisis or heavy workloads, stress levels peak. High stress levels can lead to negative outcomes such as burnout, adverse health conditions, and high rates of turnover. According to Levett et al. (2017), workplace stress contributes to “cardiovascular disease, neck and back pain, headaches, cold & flu, anxiety, depression, and other chronic conditions, as well as lack of productivity and increases in absenteeism” (p. 2).

RCORP grantees have expressed a need for resources for supporting employees, noting that health care is already a highly stressful field and, as the pandemic persists, healthcare systems continue to feel the impact. Healthcare professionals and those they provide services to have understandably reached a boiling point of exhaustion and frustration. Workplace stress and burnout is also a sustainability issue, as staff retention is a key aspect to sustaining a program or service.

Employers can implement strategies and share tools and techniques for employees to use, practice, and share with others. For example, mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to reduce the effects of workplace stress and improve employee functioning (Janssen, 2018). Implementing and practicing mindfulness-based strategies have the potential to not only support employee’s long-term health outcomes but provide upfront benefits to stress response, both in the moment and throughout the workday.

What is mindfulness?

It is “simply the practice of becoming more and more aware of one’s thoughts, feelings and emotions while cultivating the ability to listen, pay attention to the moment and feel more compassionate toward self and others” (Janssen et al. (2018), p.3).

Take a few seconds to bring your awareness to your breath. Take a second to notice – are you breathing with only the top portion of your lungs or is the breath causing your lower belly to expand? Chances are you noticed your breath is a bit shallow. This is because stress response goes hand in hand with shallow breathing. Being mindful of one’s breath and practicing deep breathing is a simple way to reap the benefits associated with practicing mindfulness, such as decreased stress response and increased attention span (Princing, 2021).

Let’s take time for a short example practice:

Bring your attention back to your breath and become aware of your breathing. Intentionally allow the in-breath to expand the low belly. Next, become aware of your outbreath, fully exhaling. Repeat this technique each breath cycle, intentionally paying attention to the breath and breathing deeply. It is natural for attention to stray away from the breath; as you become aware of this, simply return the attention back to the breath.

Tip: While practicing, think of yourself as the observer of your thoughts. Rather than getting lost in them, observe them.

This an example of a simple way to begin practicing mindful breathing. This technique can be used when sitting in meditation; responding to emails; having a difficult conversation with a client, patient, or colleague; or beginning and ending your day. Tip: Try to be aware of your breathing throughout the day, leave your self-reminders to check in and be mindful about intentionally taking deep breaths and releasing stress on the out breath.

Why does mindful breathing help to decrease stress and feelings such as anxiety, frustration, fear, and anger? While shallow breathing activates the sympathetic nervous system and leads to feelings associated with fight or flight, deep breathing activates the vagus nerve, calming the sympathetic nervous system sending signals to the brain associated with feeling calm and focused (Seppälä et al., 2020). It makes sense that proper breathing leads to better feelings.

To implement strategies with the intention of creating a more holistically supportive environment for employees, it is important to understand the impact of workplace stress and become educated about and follow through with a strategy to mitigate its impact. If you are an employee looking for ways to reduce stress, it is important to educate yourself and act.

The brief mindful breathing example given above is a great way to begin, but the resources below provide additional strategies and tools for reducing workplace stress and burnout while improving resilience and wellbeing of healthcare and behavioral health professionals.

Read AHA Hospitals in Action: Supporting Care Teams PDF to see examples of what health systems around the country are implementing to support their staff and reduce burnout.

Useful Meditation and Relaxation Apps

Published by UCSF’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Useful Wellness and Mental Help Apps provides descriptions of apps that help with meditation and relaxation, coping with anxiety and depression, and insomnia. Its suggestions for meditation and relaxation apps are:

  • Headspace: Two-week free trial for the public.
  • Health Minds Program App: Always free. Meditation and mindfulness skills.
  • Calm: Seven-day free trial. A meditation, sleep, and relaxation app.
  • Insight Timer: Always free. This is not a daily app, but rather a great library where you can search for various types of meditations and lengths by excellent teachers.
  • 10 Percent Happier (Podcasts and challenges to help you increase your happiness): Free and paid options available. (Seven days free, then $99 per year.)
  • UCLA Mindful App: Free. Meditation by Diana Winston.
  • Mindfulness Coach: Mindfulness Coach 2.0 was developed to help veterans, service members, and others learn how to practice mindfulness. The app provides a gradual, self-guided training program designed to help you understand and adopt a simple mindfulness practice.

For more information or questions related to this topic contact Jason Harris at jharris@jbsinternational.com

References

American Hospital Association. (2021). WELL-BEING PLAYBOOK 2.0: A COVID-19 Resource for Hospital and Health System Leaders. https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2021/02/alliance-playbook-2021_final.pdf

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, December 2). Healthcare Personnel and First Responders: How to Cope with Stress and Build Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/stress-coping/healthcare-workers-first-responders/index.html

Compassion Resilience Toolkit – Facilitator resources to build the capacity of helping professionals, caregivers, and the systems in which they serve. (n.d.). WISE. https://compassionresiliencetoolkit.org/

Janssen, M., Heerkens, Y., Kuijer, W., van der Heijden, B., & Engels, J. (2018). Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on employees’ mental health: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 13(1), e0191332. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191332

Levett, K. M., Coughlan, S., Longridge, S., Roumeliotis, V., & Adams, J. (2017). Be well: A systems-based wellness intervention using mindfulness in the workplace – A case study. Journal of Management & Organization, 25(5), 613–634. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2017.41

Princing, M. (2021, September 1). “This Is Why Deep Breathing Makes You Feel so Chill.” Right as Rain, https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/mind/stress/why-deep-breathing-makes-you-feel-so- chill

SAMHSA. (2020). Tips for Healthcare Professionals. https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/SAMHSA_Digital_Download/PEP20-01-01- 016_508.pdf

Seppälä, E., Bradley, C., & Goldstein, M. R. (2020, September 29). Research: Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/09/research- why breathing is so effective at reducing stress