The COVID-19 Pandemic negatively impacted the mental wellbeing of healthcare workers worldwide. Many organizations responded reactively to their staff needs. The novel, evidence-informed Social Support, Tracking Distress, Education and Discussion Community (STEADY) program was implemented, with senior leadership support across a large hospital. STEADY is a multi-pronged program developed to mitigate occupational stress injury in healthcare workers and first responders. This project examined the feasibility of implementing STEADY across hospital units during a pandemic.

STEADY was implemented in five acute care units and across the rehab site of a large hospital. Data was collected on the five program components (drop-in peer support groups and critical incident debriefs, psychoeducation workshops, wellness assessments, peer partnering, community-building initiatives). Most peer support groups were facilitated by the program manager trained in peer support and one of six clinical staff.

The program was iteratively adapted to meet the needs of target units/groups. More than 300 sessions were run in ~one year, for an average of ~1.15 sessions per unit per week. With flexible adaptation to the mode of facilitation, ~75% of planned workshops and ~85% of peer support sessions were run. Three critical incident stress debriefs were held. The formal partnering program was offered via e-mail with minimal uptake. Ninety-five wellness assessments were completed by target end-users, with 36 personalized responses sent. Gratitude trees were posted in each unit for community-building. Eight target unit staff completed formal peer support facilitation training. Twenty additional groups across the organization requested STEADY programming support and ten requested gratitude trees.

Results indicate that most components of the STEADY program were feasible to implement in hospital units during the pandemic. On-site, interactive programming was most engaging for end-users. Leadership support and flexible, continuous adaption by program leaders were identified as facilitators to program implementation and uptake.