The SelfCare for HealthCare® Program
Your Guide to Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health
With increasing demands on time, energy, and resources, health care professionals are experiencing burnout at increasingly higher rates and staff turnover continues to rise. Burnout leads to lower levels of staff engagement, patient experience, and productivity, and an increased risk of workplace accidents. Burnout also limits a providers’ empathy, a crucial component of effective person-centered care. Yet barely one-third (35%) of U.S. hospital workers said that current wellness programs encourage a healthier lifestyle.
LeAnn believes healthcare givers are not burned out but drained out. To be fortified to deliver the demands of patient care today, we must nurture their bodies, minds and spirits every day.
Each year-long initiative personally and regularly touches every team member through…
- Expressing care and focus on employees.
- Improving the overall professional and personal work-life balance of all team members.
- Focusing on improving retention and job satisfaction.
- Engaging and nurtures staff over the coming years.
- Creating a culture of health and caring.
- Initiatives are sponsored and championed by your hospital’s leadership.
LeAnn Thieman created SelfCare for HealthCare with leading CNOs from around the country, as well as experts on how adults learn in order to establish sustainable behavior change. Investing in a full year for everyone at your organization costs less than replacing the nurses that might leave your hospital today.
The SelfCare for HealthCare Program for Hospitals and Systems
SelfCare for HealthCare®: Your Guide to Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health
Patients cared for by fulfilled caregivers in healthy work environments are twice as likely to report high satisfaction. Caring leaders create holistic, nurturing, inclusive work environments that decrease turnover, improve nurse retention and nurse recruitment, improve patient outcomes, and decrease costs… a place every nurse dreams to work.
SelfCare for HealthCare® Program Details
Strategic Engagement With Leaders
Leadership engagement and support is critical to the mission and success of any program. LeAnn meets with key leaders virtually prior to launch, then on-site to assess your organization’s specific challenges and goals; she tailors her program to meet your needs. Together, a customized plan is developed for the execution and implementation of SelfCare for HealthCare. Quarterly contact with leaders addresses ongoing or changing needs, and assures success.
Customized Email and/or Video Invitations
LeAnn sends invites to all staff to motivate and garner enthusiasm for the initiative prior to the official launch on site.
Powerful Live Presentations
LeAnn delivers her riveting SelfCare for HealthCare presentation four times a day for two days, providing all staff members multiple opportunities to attend this mandatory session (CEUs available). By sharing Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul stories and those from her own 30 years of nursing, LeAnn encourages and honors nurses and all members of your healthcare team. With compassion and humor, she introduces her 12 tools for SelfCare. Staff members go back to work recharged, and recommitted to care for their patients and themselves!
Launching With Leadership
On the day of the launch, LeAnn meets with leaders prior to her presentations to reinforce the plan and maximize support and success of the initiative.
Rounding on All Units
Together with your Chief Nursing Officer and/or leaders of your choice, LeAnn tours every unit to greet, encourage, and consult staff, boosting enthusiasm, compliance, and morale.
Champions
LeAnn will assist in the selection of Champions from each department. Monthly tip sheets offer activities to reinforce engagement and strengthen teamwork to nurture a safe, productive environment. Quarterly virtual consultation meetings connect Champions to provide support and idea sharing.
Personal Study Guides
Staff members receive a personal copy of SelfCare for HealthCare. The 12 lessons provide simple strategies to care for their bodies, minds, and spirits, with sidebars featuring supporting research and exercises. Each chapter concludes with study guide questions to facilitate the reader’s reflections on their SelfCare and instructions to implement specific strategies to create their own “care plan.”
Inspirational Compelling Videos
To begin each month’s lesson, staff members view a 7-10 minute video of LeAnn introducing that chapter’s SelfCare strategy. This fun, motivational speaking session will be viewed on your organization’s intranet service, at each person’s preferred time and place (even at home in their jammies!), reinforcing the work/life balance message.
Monday Morning Motivation
Every Monday morning, staff will find a fun, motivational email from LeAnn, offering wisdom and support for that month’s life-balance strategy, ensuring ongoing enthusiasm and participation. Example Monday Morning Motivation
SelfCare for HealthCare App
The app combines all the program elements for easy and convenient access from a smart phone, boosting engagement for our busy caregivers.
SelfCare Assessment and Engagement Survey
LeAnn’s Implementation Specialist sends surveys prior to the launch, at six months, and at year’s end to measure success and results.
Contact Hours
Nurse participants can receive 25 contact hours. This nursing continuing professional development activity was approved by Colorado Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. App is necessary to receive contact hours.
As a SelfCare for HealthCare client, you will have access to additional offerings from LeAnn Thieman that will boost your nurse recruitment and nurse retention.
The Science Behind SelfCare for HealthCare
A key component to SelfCare for HealthCare program is surveys taken prior to, at 6 months, and at the completion of the program. Participants have noted an 82% increase in caring for themselves physically, 44% increase in caring for themselves mentally, 31% increase in caring for themselves spiritually, and an astounding 82% increase in agreement with “my leadership cares about my wellness and life balance.” Clients have appreciated a 13% increase in retention, 16% decrease in sick days, and 20% increase in engagement. Now the program is evidence-based. The research project reported: SelfCare for HealthCare is one of the most rigorously tested and impactful programs we’ve come across. The results are robust and statistically significant in ways that are incredibly important for any hospital.
Our whitepaper, How SelfCare for HealthCare® Advances IHI’s Framework for Improving Joy in Work, further proves the science supporting the tremendous benefits of this program.