Provider Resilience

Part of self-care is avoiding compassion fatigue, which means avoiding negative feelings toward the ability to complete a job effectively or handle work-related stress. Compassion fatigue has 2 components, according to T2: burnout and secondary traumatic stress. To avoid or combat compassion fatigue, the app gives frontline providers tools to keep themselves productive and emotionally healthy as they help our nation’s service members, veterans, and their families.

DASHBOARD

The app’s home screen is a dashboard, which tracks wellbeing across 4 parameters, all based on self-assessments: vacation time, burnout scale, builders and killers checklist, and professional quality-of-life (ProQOL) measures. Each of these 4 assessments calculates the user’s resilience rating, displayed by a colored meter measuring from 0 (low) to 100 (high).

Beneath the resilience rating meter is a prominent vacation clock, running time down to the minute since the user’s last recorded vacation day. To measure burnout, the app offers a survey for 10 measures that should be updated by the user at least once a week. The question asked of users is, “How would you describe yourself as you approach your workday today?” All measures, including happy, trapped, satisfied, and preoccupied, can be rated from “Not at All” to “Very Much So.”

The professional quality-of-life (ProQOL) quiz is the longest of all—30 questions—but the resilience rating relies on an update only every 30 days. This quiz measures 3 critical components of ProQOL: compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Average scores provide the following output for each section:

1. Compassion Satisfaction: “You’ve scored in the average range of Compassion Satisfaction. … This suggests that you don’t find your work to be consistently satisfying, but that you do derive some degree of satisfaction from your daily work activities."

2. Burnout: “Your Burnout score is in the average range. … This may indicate that you are currently experiencing frustration in your work and may be feeling discouraged or ineffective. It may be worth reviewing your answers to see if you can pin down the source of these feelings and determine how you might improve your experience at work.”

3. Secondary Traumatic Stress: “If you are working with clients or patients who are describing highly traumatic experiences, be sure to focus on self-care, which includes maintaining physical, emotional, social, and spiritual supports.”

The dashboard also tracks how many days until the user needs to update each section, and daily reminders (push notifications) to do so may be modified in Settings.

TOOLS

There are 7 videos currently loaded into the app. Two informational videos (both running under 10 minutes) cover burnout and secondary traumatic stress so that users can gain a richer understanding either of what they are experiencing or what they are trying to avoid. The remaining 5 videos are shorter and can be found in the “Remind Me Why I Do This” menu. These videos cover important patient characteristics that have been found to lead to compassion fatigue, including alcohol, anger, depression, depression support, and stigma.

Scrolling flashcards can be found in “Physical Exercise” and include an assortment of stretching exercises the user can perform at his or her work desk. And if stretching doesn’t release enough endorphins, the user can raise his or her spirit browsing the cartoons found in “I Need A Laugh.” All of the cartoons are office-related, updated daily, and archived for the user’s pleasure.

Nearly 100 inspirational flashcards are loaded onto the app, each one defining a valuable character trait, associated quote, and affirmations. To scroll through the cards, which are listed alphabetically from “Acceptance” through “Unity,” simply swipe left or right. To flip the card over, swipe up or down on the screen.