Transforming a Stressful Workplace into a Healthier Environment

Maryanna Klatt is the Director of Integrative Health at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. An integrative educator and researcher, she studies the impact of mindfulness on chronic stress and burnout through her program Mindfulness in Motion. A professor of clinical family and community medicine and a 500-hour certified yoga instructor, she advances whole-person health in both practice and teaching.

In an exclusive interview with Healthcare Business Review, she shared her invaluable thoughts on stress management and the future of the industry.

Journey Towards Resilience and Healing

Twenty-one years a0go, I developed a Resiliency Building program for healthcare professionals. With a small grant of two thousand dollars, I piloted the program involving faculty and staff at the Ohio State University Medical Center. We were looking at cortisol reduction, stress reduction, and resiliency building, which delivered some encouraging results.

The program name, Mindfulness in Motion, is meant to be a double entendre, referring to incorporating awareness of the present moment into daily routines, in addition to practicing movement, such as gentle yoga stretches, that get physical motion in one’s day. Since 2004, significant reductions in burnout and stress, alongside significant improvements in resilience and work engagement, have been consistently achieved.

In a study involving nurses in the surgical intensive care unit, we measured salivary alpha-amylase, a marker of sympathetic nervous system activation. The results showed a 40 percent drop in their stress biomarker with no change in stress of the environment. What changed was their response to the very stressful healthcare environment, characterized by high patient acuity and the demands of family members.

The nurses had a significant realization that they could change their reactions to stressful events. During this time, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center invested in its employee wellness. It started covering the cost for any faculty and staff to participate in the Mindfulness in Motion program. Ohio State also offers many service lines within our Center for Integrative Health to help people restore a sense of resilience.

Since 2018, we have delivered the program to nearly 2000 employees through a 30-minute intervention over eight weeks, resulting in a 37 percent reduction in burnout compared to the start of the program which achieved 28% reduction. Pivotal is the Mindfulness in Motion mobile app supporting daily practice. This app has been very effective among the staff in transitioning from one patient’s room to another while doing a daily two-minute short video. Clinicians benefit from examining the cause of stress and using modalities such as breathing exercises, mindset changes, and remembering their purpose in the hospital to relieve stress.

Virtual program delivery in conjunction with the mobile app has allowed us to scale and disseminate to other hospital systems. Mindful eating and sleeping, a sense of purpose and identity, staying in balance, and being flexible are the eight different topics in our program. We were in the hospital system in Tasmania, and we are currently in Boston and hospitals across Ohio. We found something that works for the busy healthcare professional. First, understand their stress, help them recognize their sense of agency, and finally learn how they can get on top of their stress. My journey has been joyful, productive and very fulfilling one.

Future of Stress Management

The future of stress management should focus on the workplace, as people spend so much time there and can learn the skill of resilience at work. Employers should recognize the importance of providing realistic, pragmatic stress reduction strategies that make a difference in people’s actual lives. We have accomplished that for the healthcare professionals who work at the medical center. Employee stress affects the healthcare we deliver, so employers need to implement effective evidenced-based stress-reduction initiatives.

Organizations should enable people to adopt a more integrated approach to managing stress by incorporating stress-reduction training into their paid workday. For instance, a floating nurse should be appointed to cover the actual nurse during her intervention period. Recognizing the importance of stress reduction is reflected in the willingness to pay the employee during the intervention time, which is a significant, and pivotal part of the puzzle.