Minnesota organization convened healthcare leaders to gather best practices for supporting the mental health and wellbeing of COVID caregivers
Bloomington, Minn. – October 14 , 2020 – Representatives from ICSI announced they have wrapped their first mental health support series for COVID healthcare workers, a series of live, interactive sessions focused on sharing ways to proactively support the mental and emotional health of the healthcare workforce during the pandemic.
The sessions began on April 14, 2020 and continued on a bi-weekly basis through September of this year. Each session featured healthcare leaders presenting implementation strategies including models for intervention, peer support, stress reduction and other factors impacting the wellbeing of healthcare workers on the frontlines of COVID-19.
Presentations were collected and curated into a shared knowledge network managed by ICSI. Based on the this information ICSI also created a Mental Health Playbook to provide planning and implementation strategies to support the current and long-term mental and emotional wellbeing of healthcare workforces. Nearly 1,000 healthcare representatives participated in the sessions, including leaders from across the United States.
“It’s a testament to the readiness and resilience of our industry that we were able to create this forum so quickly, and that so many mental health and healthcare leaders were eager to participate, despite enormous pressure from the COVID-19 crisis,” said Tani Hemmila, Director of the MN Health Collaborative for ICSI. “More than a dozen programs were presented and adapted across the network over the course of the past 5 months, representing both existing best practices and those adapted to meet additional needs as a result of the pandemic.” Hemmila added that a second series is being planned to address changing needs over time.
Healthcare and mental health experts from organizations including the University of Minnesota, Johns Hopkins University, Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai Health System and the University of Missouri were among those presenting sessions during the series which included best practices originating from healthcare as well as military, education and social work programs.
Session summaries, materials and call reports are available on ICSI’s website.