Researchers develop active listening system for creating ‘workforce wellness culture’ among healthcare workers

Healthcare leaders looking to optimize their workplaces for the health and wellbeing of healthcare workers have a new model from which to draw how-to tips, ideas and guidance.

The model is described in a study released ahead of peer review in BMC Health Services Research. The authors are subject matter experts at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. 

Those two organizations recently collaborated to create Be Well Together. They set up this initiative to assess the “the workforce wellness culture”—and, with it, the actionable variables behind burnout—in four Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in their home state. 

In the study report, senior author Elyse Park, PhD, MPH, and colleagues share how they developed a rapid qualitative analysis (RQA) process to conduct and evaluate careful listening sessions with leaders, managers and other workers at the four FQHCs. 

The sessions and analyses thereof rolled out over a three-year period—10 at baseline and eight at the end of the study grant period. 

The core of the listening sessions consisted of attention to such aspects of workforce wellness as burnout, access to wellness resources and use of available resources, the authors report. 

“High patient volume and acuity introduce heightened strains on healthcare services, which increases the risk of healthcare staff burnout,” the authors note. 

Process is generalizable, customizable 

Park and co-authors outline six steps that, together, make up their tailored RQA process. Examples of steps include “Create a grid by site/population” and “Group themes.” 

Many if not most of the steps and sub-steps are generalizable to other healthcare work settings. 

In their discussion section, the authors state the work confirms the findings of previous studies that wellness-based interventions can improve wellbeing, engagement and resilience while also, not incidentally, reducing burnout.

They emphasize their study’s use of both individual- and system-level interventions, citing prior research that did the same. 

“This rapid analysis method can be used in future multi-group studies when conducting qualitative group interviews over a longitudinal period,” Park and colleagues comment. 

Among the limitations the researchers acknowledge are fluctuating participation levels, including those related to worker turnover across the three-year window. 

Regardless of cause, some who were present for baseline sessions were absent for follow-up—and vice-versa. 

‘Difficulty regaining a sense of normalcy’ 

Also of note, over the three years, the FQHCs “experienced difficulty regaining a sense of normalcy, with fatigue and burnout still being significant,” the authors observed. “The FQHCs, programs and grants for healthcare worker wellbeing experienced changes in funding, and these changes could have impacted staff wellbeing.”

Also likely influencing the health status of the workforce were personal life events, schedule changes and staffing changes.

The project’s limitations as well as its strengths could be useful to other provider organizations mulling an initiative tapping the power of listening sessions and rapid qualitative analysis.

The pre-publication study is available in full for free. (Click Download PDF.)