Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • ESG: THE IMPLEMENTATION IMPERATIVE
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Current News
    • Providers
    • Insurance
    • Digital Health
    • Government
    • Finance
    • Technology
    • Safety & Quality
    • Transformation
    • People
    • Regional News
    • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Patients
    • Operations
    • Care Delivery
    • Payment
    • Midwest
    • Northeast
    • South
    • West
  • Unwell in America
  • Opinion
    • Bold Moves
    • Breaking Bias
    • Commentaries
    • Letters
    • Vital Signs Blog
    • From the Editor
  • Events & Awards
    • Awards
    • Conferences
    • Galas
    • Virtual Briefings
    • Webinars
    • Nominate/Eligibility
    • 100 Most Influential People
    • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
    • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
    • Excellence in Governance
    • Health Care Hall of Fame
    • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
    • Top 25 Emerging Leaders
    • Top 25 Innovators
    • Diversity in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
      • - Leaders to Watch
    • Women in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Women Leaders
      • - Women to Watch
    • Digital Health Transformation Summit
    • ESG: The Implementation Imperative Summit
    • Leadership Symposium
    • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
    • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
    • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
    • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
    • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
    • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
    • - Hospital of the Future
    • - Value Based Care
    • - Hospital at Home
    • - Workplace of the Future
    • - Digital Health
    • - Future of Staffing
    • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
  • Multimedia
    • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
    • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
    • Video Series - The Check Up
    • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
  • Data Center
    • Data Center Home
    • Hospital Financials
    • Staffing & Compensation
    • Quality & Safety
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Data Archive
    • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
    • Surveys
    • Data Points
  • MORE+
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Media Kit
    • Newsletters
    • Jobs
    • People on the Move
    • Reprints & Licensing
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. Providers
July 18, 2015 01:00 AM

Helping staff who are traumatized by errors

Maureen McKinney
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints Print

    In 2001, when Cheryl Connors was just three years into her career as a nurse, an 18-month-old girl named Josie King died as a result of medical errors on Connors' unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

    Hospital administrators instructed nurses and physicians, who were traumatized by the little girl's death, not to discuss the case. They were left with no support and no way to work through their feelings. “Over the next year, I watched a lot of great nurses leave our unit and even leave the profession altogether,” Connors said. “The culture on our unit was swirling in the toilet.”

    In the years that followed, she became deeply involved in efforts to make care safer at the hospital, rising to her current post as patient-safety specialist at the hospital's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. But her experiences following Josie's death stuck with her.

    In 2010, she teamed up with Dr. Albert Wu, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins, to find a way to offer hospital staff needed emotional support following adverse events. In 2000, Wu wrote about the “second victim” phenomenon—a term that refers to the effects that medical errors have on caregivers and staff—in a widely read article in the journal BMJ.

    After a medical error, employees may suffer from anxiety, shame and depression. The symptoms, if left unchecked, can progress to post-traumatic stress syndrome, Wu said. “It's evident that some people, months and years later, are still trying to avoid trigger situations or certain kinds of patients.”

    Wu argues that hospitals need to provide support for stressed employees, not only because it's the right thing to do, but also because without such help, they are more likely to make mistakes on the job or leave their positions. There have even been cases of distraught caregivers who took their own lives after a medical error, he said.

    MH Strategies

    Support for staff

    Get senior leaders on board: You'll need their support ot make sure peer responders have time reserved to respond to calls, said Dr. Albert Wu.

    Invest in training: Peer volunteers need to learn very specific techniques to provide effective support, said Carolyn Candiello of Great Boston Medical Center.

    Reach out to hospitals that have done work in this area, or to groups such as the Maryland Center for Patient Safety.

    Provide options for support: If you don't have the resources to start your own program, make sure employees know about the Medically Induced Trauma Support Service, which can provide telephone support to clinicians involved in medical errors.

    An initial meeting to gauge interest in a support program drew nearly 60 people, including the hospital's vice president of medical affairs and other top administrators. Wu and Connors then assembled a team and spent several months discussing goals and developing training protocols. They also teamed with the Maryland Center for Patient Safety, which provided funding to create a training curriculum and materials that could be used in other facilities.

    “What we ended up with was a volunteer peer-responder program whose sole mission was to provide timely support to staff who had encountered patient-related events and who could benefit from help,” Wu said.

    In November 2011, the team launched a pilot of the program in the pediatrics department. Eighteen volunteers staffed a 24-hour pager and fielded several calls a month, Connors said. After seven months, they expanded the number of peer responders to 36 and implemented the program, known as RISE—resilience in stressful events—across the entire hospital. The program is separate from the hospital's root-cause analyses and other post-error patient-safety work, focusing solely on staff support.

    RISE provides peer support, not counseling, Connors said. Volunteers are trained to offer more resources if employees need additional help after a phone conversation or in-person meeting. But in the vast majority of cases, that one interaction is enough to help them talk through their feelings, move forward and get back to work, she said.

    One big challenge, Wu said, is helping staff understand that they can ask for support. “In healthcare, people feel like they should be dispassionate and suck it up,” he said. “And when an error occurs, they might not feel like they're deserving of help.”

    Using the Johns Hopkins curriculum, two other hospitals, Greater Baltimore Medical Center and the University of Maryland Medical Center, recently launched peer-responder programs. Greater Baltimore has received four calls since its program began in March, said Carolyn Candiello, the hospital's vice president for quality and safety.

    The Maryland Center for Patient Safety is in talks with several other hospitals that are interested in the program, now known as Caring for Caregivers, said Robert Imhoff, the center's CEO. Like the program at Johns Hopkins, Imhoff expects participating hospitals to see eventual improvements in employee turnover, employee satisfaction and measures of safety culture.

    “I saw all of the things we do to foster employee satisfaction, like ice cream socials and pizza parties,” said Imhoff, a former hospital administrator. “That's all well and good. But nothing speaks to an employee like a program that says, 'We understand the tremendous strain you're under and we are here to support and care for you.' ”

    Correction, July 23, 2015

    A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the name of Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Send us a letter

    Have an opinion about this story? Click here to submit a Letter to the Editor, and we may publish it in print.

    Recommended for You
    health care_doc and patient_i.jpg
    Michigan primary care doctors want more funding to help rural staffing shortages
    BurnoutUnsplash.jpg
    Health systems bet on employee mental health initiatives
    Most Popular
    1
    More healthcare organizations at risk of credit default, Moody's says
    2
    Centene fills out senior executive team with new president, COO
    3
    SCAN, CareOregon plan to merge into the HealthRight Group
    4
    Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan unveils big push that lets physicians take on risk, reap rewards
    5
    Bright Health weighs reverse stock split as delisting looms
    Sponsored Content
    Modern Healthcare A.M. Newsletter: Sign up to receive a comprehensive weekday morning newsletter designed for busy healthcare executives who need the latest and most important healthcare news and analysis.
    Get Newsletters

    Sign up for enewsletters and alerts to receive breaking news and in-depth coverage of healthcare events and trends, as they happen, right to your inbox.

    Subscribe Today
    MH Magazine Cover

    MH magazine offers content that sheds light on healthcare leaders’ complex choices and touch points—from strategy, governance, leadership development and finance to operations, clinical care, and marketing.

    Subscribe
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • RSS

    Our Mission

    Modern Healthcare empowers industry leaders to succeed by providing unbiased reporting of the news, insights, analysis and data.

    Contact Us

    (877) 812-1581

    Email us

     

    Resources
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise with Us
    • Ad Choices Ad Choices
    • Sitemap
    Editorial Dept
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Code of Ethics
    • Awards
    • About Us
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Modern Healthcare
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Current News
      • Providers
      • Insurance
      • Digital Health
      • Government
      • Finance
      • Technology
      • Safety & Quality
      • Transformation
        • Patients
        • Operations
        • Care Delivery
        • Payment
      • People
      • Regional News
        • Midwest
        • Northeast
        • South
        • West
      • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Unwell in America
    • Opinion
      • Bold Moves
      • Breaking Bias
      • Commentaries
      • Letters
      • Vital Signs Blog
      • From the Editor
    • Events & Awards
      • Awards
        • Nominate/Eligibility
        • 100 Most Influential People
        • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
        • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
        • Excellence in Governance
        • Health Care Hall of Fame
        • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
        • Top 25 Emerging Leaders
        • Top 25 Innovators
        • Diversity in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
          • - Leaders to Watch
        • Women in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Women Leaders
          • - Women to Watch
      • Conferences
        • Digital Health Transformation Summit
        • ESG: The Implementation Imperative Summit
        • Leadership Symposium
        • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
        • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
      • Galas
        • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
        • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
        • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
        • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
      • Virtual Briefings
        • - Hospital of the Future
        • - Value Based Care
        • - Hospital at Home
        • - Workplace of the Future
        • - Digital Health
        • - Future of Staffing
        • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
      • Webinars
    • Multimedia
      • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
      • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
      • Video Series - The Check Up
      • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
    • Data Center
      • Data Center Home
      • Hospital Financials
      • Staffing & Compensation
      • Quality & Safety
      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Data Archive
      • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
      • Surveys
      • Data Points
    • MORE+
      • Contact Us
      • Advertise
      • Media Kit
      • Newsletters
      • Jobs
      • People on the Move
      • Reprints & Licensing