Effects of a Workplace Well-Being Program on Professional Quality of Life Among Health Care Personnel.
Background: A healthy, competent, and compassionate health care workforce is critical to ensure that health systems can deliver high-quality, safe patient care. Therefore, health care personnel need access to scalable, recurring, evidence-based training opportunities to bolster compassion, mitigate burnout, and enhance resiliency, ultimately improving their professional quality of life. This evaluation examined the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of workplace-based well-being training opportunities offered by Atlanta's Resiliency Resource for frontline Workers (ARROW) program across two health systems.
Methods: ARROW formed through an academic practice partnership designed to introduce health care personnel to evidence-based mindfulness and compassion-based training opportunities: the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) and Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT). Trainees provided evaluation feedback immediately before, two weeks after, and three months after attending a CRM or CBCT event. The Short Professional Quality of Life Scale assessed compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction; the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale assessed resiliency.
Results: ARROW hosted 59 training events that directly trained 761 health care personnel. Trainees' compassion fatigue scores, a key component of professional quality of life, decreased up to three months after engaging in programming by 0.32 points (p = 0.005, d = -0.14). Trainees who attended CBCT events were observed to have additional declines in compassion fatigue scores, by 0.45 points (p = 0.016, d = -0.215). No differences in burnout, compassion satisfaction, or resiliency were observed. ARROW mentored 68 health care personnel to become either CRM- or CBCT-certified instructors using a train-the-trainer approach. New trainers continued to offer well-being training opportunities and reached an additional 772 colleagues.
Conclusions: The findings from this evaluation indicate the broad reach and sustained impact ARROW had across health systems, engaging health care personnel in workplace well-being programming to bolster professional quality of life. Specifically, improvements in compassion fatigue scores following program participation corresponded to a small effect size; however, no changes in burnout, compassion satisfaction, or resiliency were seen after engaging in ARROW programming.