Using Text Messages to Support Nurse Well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant nurse stress and contributed to burnout for a number of reasons, including but not limited to personal protective equipment shortages, furloughs, overtime, reassignment to unfamiliar work environments, and alternate staffing patterns, all of which contribute to grief, loss, fear, and anger. While the nursing profession and employers offered support and psychological first-aid resources, there was a disconnect in effectively linking stressed nurses with these needed resources. An innovative statewide pilot project in Arizona, RNconnect 2 Wellbeing, was created to determine whether nurses might respond to and use supportive resources via opt-in text messages. Over a 12-week enrollment trial, 2997 nurse users opted to receive brief, twice weekly, well-being text messages about subjects, such as increasing awareness, self-care, and gratitude. By the end of the pilot, 2777 nurse users remained enrolled (7% opt out). Convenience evaluation surveys were conducted at midpoint (n = 294) and pilot completion (n = 404). Satisfaction with the messages ranged from 73% to 86%. Forty-eight percent indicated they had integrated the resources into their daily lives. RNconnect 2 Wellbeing, an innovative and cost-effective approach to communicating with nurses, has laid the groundwork for the use of technology via brief text messages to improve nurse well-being.

Bringing back the basics of nursing: defining patient care essentials.

Nursing leadership involves creating and sustaining a professional environment where nurses can perform at the highest levels of their preparation and expertise. As the work of nursing becomes increasingly more complex and significantly more technical in nature, nurses are beginning to find that the basic nursing interventions that were once the hallmark of good nursing care are being left behind. The purpose of this article is to describe an initiative to develop a clearly defined set of consensus-driven expectations about those essential, foundational elements of nursing care that nurses strive for and which we wanted to be universal within our organization, no matter where the patient receives care. The leadership challenge was to convey expectations that encompass both the tasks of nursing care and the compassionate environment in which the care is delivered. Adding to the complexity of this goal was the recognition that we would be much more successful in meeting these standards consistently if the expectations were grounded in the experience of direct care nurses, explicitly described and intentionally specified. This article describes the various phases of this initiative and includes the resulting "Patient Care Essentials" document.

Building personal and professional resources of resilience and agility in the healthcare workplace.

This article describes the rationale, implementation and results of a pilot study evaluating the personal and organizational impact of an educational intervention on the stress of health team members. The compelling imperative for the project was to find a positive and effective way to address the documented stress levels of healthcare workers. Pilot study of oncology staff (n=29) and healthcare leaders (n=15) exploring the impact of a positive coping approach on Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment-Revised (POQA-R) scores at baseline and 7 months using paired t-tests. Personal and organizational indicators of stress decreased in the expected directions in both groups over the time intervals. The majority of POQA-R categories were statistically significantly improved in the oncology staff, and many of the categories were statistically significantly improved in the leadership group. The findings from this project demonstrate that stress and its symptoms are problematic issues for hospital and ambulatory clinic staff as evidenced by baseline measures of distress. Further, a workplace intervention was feasible and effective in promoting positive strategies for coping and enhancing well-being, personally and organizationally.

Nurse leader mindfulness meditation program for stress management: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to rigorously evaluate a brief stress management intervention for nurse leaders. BACKGROUND: Despite the nursing shortage, evidence-based workplace approaches addressing nurse stress have not been well studied. METHODS: Nurse leaders (n = 33) were randomly assigned to brief mindfulness meditation course (MMC) or leadership course (control). Self-report measures of stress were administered at baseline and within 1 week of course completion. RESULTS: Among MMC participants, change scores (from baseline to postintervention) on several subscales of the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised showed significantly more improvement in self-reported stress symptoms relative to controls. Mindfulness meditation course participants had significantly more improvement in Positive Symptom Distress Index (P = 0.010; confidence interval [CI] = -0.483 to -0.073) and Global Severity Index (P = 0.019; CI = -0.475 to -0.046) and nearly significantly more improvement in Positive Symptom Total (P = 0.066; CI = -16.66 to 0.581) compared with controls. CONCLUSION: Results support preliminary effectiveness of a 4-week MMC in reducing self-reported stress symptoms among nursing leaders.

Implementing evidence-based nursing practice.

A methodology for establishing and supporting evidence-based nursing practice is examined. Description of a clinical and administrative scenario serves as an example of a systematic appraisal of the relevant literature that had implications for clinical practice.

Implementing evidence-based nursing practice.

A methodology for establishing and supporting evidence-based nursing practice is examined. Description of a clinical and administrative scenario serves as an example of a systematic appraisal of the relevant literature that had implications for clinical practice.

Charting the course. A quality journey.

The development of a nursing quality program is particularly challenging in the face of building a new hospital, hiring and orienting 800 staff, purchasing supplies and equipment, writing policies, developing workflows and processes, and implementing an electronic medical record. This is the story of one hospital's journey. Strategies for success and lessons learned along the way are shared.