Taking a systems approach to promote posttraumatic growth: A position paper

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs health systems emerge from the pandemic, academic medical centres are motivated to have a healthy and resilient workforce. In the face of the collective traumas of the pandemic, we took a systems approach to infuse wellness into our culture by modelling collective recovery in a non-traditional town hall. Over a dozen senior leaders, faculty, staff, and students shared their personal experiences in a virtual forum, nearly 1000 attendees communally supported one another. Since the town hall, a recording of the experience has been broadly viewed, messaging from leaders proliferated, and smaller versions of the same exercise were implemented. At a time when academic medical centres faced multiple challenges, we chose to first value the well-being of our staff at a system-wide level. It is our hope that other academic medical centres leverage our story to hold space for the experiences of the people who make their work possible.KEYWORDS: COVID-19professional well-beingtrauma-informed Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Members of this group developed the 3 R’s as a collaborative approach to system-level conversations and financial strategy. The 3 R’s influences the development and implementation of this project. More can be read about the 3 R’s here: https://uofuhealth.utah.edu/notes/postings/2021/05/town-hall-moving-forward.php#.YQCMuBNKi8U2. Because this town hall was intended as a community building and quality improvement event, the metrics we use to measure its success are rooted in attendance and participation. These primary goals reflect our hopes for broad institutional change marked by events such as these which – in theory – promise cultural shifts.