Stress management has become an increasing concern of United States employers, especially healthcare employers. Healthcare employers, especially, have made significant strides in promoting wellness and stress management programs within their organizations. Those that did are realizing improvements in employee health, satisfaction and retention; enhanced work performance and lower healthcare costs.

 

Nurses have become the focus of many of these efforts because of the impact caregiving has on them physically and, in many instances, psychologically. Providing a better workplace environment and promoting positive health habits has a positive effect on nurses and that improves their ability to provide better patient care.

 

Initiatives that are offered include stress management classes, mindfulness training, smoking cessation programs, yoga or exercise classes, fitness center membership discounts, and employee health services onsite. As these programs grow and become a more robust portion of an employee’s benefit package, nurses will become more inquisitive about which employer offers an attractive stress management program and better work environment.

 

An excellent example is one South Florida organization that demonstrated its commitment to the well-being of all of its employees by providing complementary therapies free-of- charge throughout the workday as well as after work hours to staff at every level of the organization. Complementary therapies are holistic interventions that complement traditional medical care to help to relieve the emotional and physical symptoms of stress; improve, maintain, and promote health and well-being; prevent disease; and treat illness.

 

Today, healthcare employers have a responsibility to promote wellness programs to the healthcare professionals they employ; but, first, they must educate the employees as to the value of these programs and stress management. These initiatives are most successful when their development includes employee input from the onset. Employees and other stakeholders also should contribute to an ongoing process to evaluate the success of the programs against measurable outcomes, at least on an annual basis.

 

Well developed, stress management programs, include partnerships between operational department, human resources, education and quality department leaders. Their collaborative dialogue and partnerships should help develop an ongoing employee educational calendar targeted at decreasing work related stressors, promoting high performance, greater employee input and better quality of care. These partnerships encourage sharing of essential quality measurement data and discourage silo-thinking with in departments.

 

Since employee stress drains $400 billion from United States employers, it is critical for all employers to focus on thoughtful development and implementation of employee stress management initiatives. These programs over time will have a noticeable pay-off to the individual employee, employer and, ultimately, to the quality of care provided to patients.