© Provided by WDSU New Orleans ochsner
Dr. R. John Sawyer juggles a lot. He is a father of two and a neuropsychologist at Ochsner Health. He has seen patients with COVID-19 struggle — and patients without the virus put their appointments on hold. He has seen heavy workloads wear coworkers thin, driving many to quit the front lines.
“Our lives are unpredictable and have been for two years,” he said.
But seeking to cool down burnout among health care workers, Ochsner has won a $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The money will fund coaching workshops, counseling, stress management and other programs aimed at boosting worker morale.
Ochsner’s Office of Professional Well-Being will handle the services. The office is the first of its kind at a Louisiana hospital.
“The issue of workforce fulfillment is the most important thing I’ve ever taken on in my profession,” Girgrah said. “The pandemic, the various surges of the pandemic, we’ve seen many emotions. We have to destigmatize the issue of mental health in the health care sector.”
One program will give nurses at eight Ochsner hospitals a year of coaching, then another six months of feedback.
“What keeps me up at night is turnover with my nursing colleagues,” Girgrah said. “I’m so proud to receive this grant because I think it will let us move forward more quickly in this important area.”
Other offerings include: online forums for health care workers to share challenges and coping strategies; clinical services for employees and immediate relatives; and regularly scheduled time to share emotional issues they face in caring for patients.
“We’re going to have to experiment, see which initiatives work, which we should scale,” Girgrah said. “We have to measure burnout. We have to measure mental health.”
The psychologist Sawyer is grateful for the grant, which he says will give him time and space to look inward.
“It allows us to experience a lot of agency and power to change our lives, whether that’s our lives at home 0r at work,” he said. “That gets me excited everyday.”
READ THE FULL STORY:‘We have to measure mental health’: How a $2.9M grant will help Ochsner fight front-line burnout
