Emerging Missouri Practices

North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health

Uplift is an initiative aimed at providing support to North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health employees who are experiencing trauma or distress of any kind. These are events that can occur while at work, such as staff assaults, preventative harm to patients, coping with patient deaths or COVID-19-related incidents. They also can involve circumstances outside of work, such as divorce, death of a loved one or illness. These types of events can prevent individuals from being fully engaged and finding meaning in their work.

The Uplift initiative’s plan is to educate all staff to identify peers who need encouragement, but the goal is to identify a group of people who are good at listening, demonstrate compassion, and have a high degree of integrity who can sit down with a co-worker and provide support. By training and equipping a select group of employees to respond to the requests for support (based on an application, referral and interview process), an additional layer of care is provided. Uplift will supplement other resources such as the Employee Assistance Program. North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health are grateful to other organizations that helped frame the initiative, including Johns Hopkins University and the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Capital Region Medical Center

Capital Region Medical Center’s well-being initiatives began before COVID-19 as part of the strategic plan to ensure that employees had resources available to prevent burnout. CRMC is fortunate to have a Center for Mental Wellness that has been an integral part in formulating plans.

Employee surveys conducted by CMW determined where resources needed to be allocated and allowed the hospital to target plans to specific groups with specific needs. The PAUSE team, which was created as an inpatient peer-to-peer support program, has been incredibly successful in past years; therefore, CRMC expanded the model to other areas, including clinics and ancillary areas. Physician Healthcare Coaching is an additional resource that was deployed this year.

CRMC’s Employee Assistance Program continues to be integral to the organization. The EAP recently was deployed to the inpatient floors as COVID-19 patients and acuity has risen. Counselors were available to nurses and staff, individually or as a group.

The hospital also provided a focused physical wellness program concentrating on nutrition, movement and stress reduction. This year, an increased emphasis on financial wellness and education is in place, with education offered on everything from budgeting to retirement.