COVID-19 has taken a toll on the mental well-being of so many healthcare workers who are facing unprecedented challenges as they care for patients while trying to protect their own health and that of their loved ones. To support workers in the dialysis community, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) created a special online learning module, Pursuing Mental Wellness: The Impact of COVID-19 on Dialysis Facility Staff. Several members of our Rogosin leadership team participated in the development of this module, which is available to healthcare workers across the country through the ASN.
Jeffrey Silberzweig, MD, Chief Medical Officer, and Daniel Cukor, PhD, Director, Behavioral Health, helped develop content for the interactive module, highlighting the stress many staff are experiencing and offering strategies for developing the resiliency needed at this time. Daniel Levine, PhD, Chief Information and Security Officer, transformed a self-assessment tool,The Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL),* which was included with the module in PDF format, into an easy-to-use online survey.
The ProQOL has been available for many years and is recognized as a useful tool to help healthcare workers assess their own wellbeing. Participants answer 30 questions on a scale of 1 to 5, and tally their responses to ascertain their personal compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress levels. When Dr. Levine saw the survey, which had to be printed out for participants to complete, he thought it could be simpler to use and wrote code for an automated online version.
“Now all you have to do is answer the survey online and the program does the math for you,” says Dr. Levine. “It is much easier and time-saving for providers who are working so hard to care for patients. Doctor Cukor told ASN about it, and they asked me for permission to incorporate the code into their module. I was very glad to share the code and be a part of this effort, which is providing a real service to the larger nephrology community.”
*© B. Hudnall Stamm, 2009. Professional Quality of Life: Compassion Satisfaction and Fatigue Version 5 (ProQOL). /www.isu.edu/~bhstamm or www.proqol.org
Click here to go to the module.
Click here to take the ProQOL survey.
Learn more about Behavioral Health.
