Outliers: App offers military providers new coping tool

Providers in the Military Health System who are feeling the pressure of caring for our wounded warriors now have one more tool to help them cope.

The Defense Department's National Center for Telehealth and Technology has developed the Provider Resilience app. The aim is to help military healthcare providers stay “productive and emotionally healthy as they cope with burnout and compassion fatigue,” according to a news release.

After a user answers a few questions, the app calculates and displays a “resilience rating.” The dashboard also has a digital counter that shows (to the minute) how long it's been since the user's last vacation. From the dashboard, a user can do a monthly update of a professional quality-of-life assessment (using a scale developed at Idaho State University); do a weekly assessment of burnout level; and track resiliency “builders” and “killers” daily.

There are also various tools, including suggestions for simple isometric exercises, videos and a “burnout graph” to track progress. Need a laugh? The app offers a daily “Dilbert” cartoon.

Those features enable users to “rate themselves on feelings of being happy, trapped, satisfied, preoccupied, connected, worn out, caring, on edge, valuable and traumatized.”