Introduction
Unfortunately, employees across industries and fields often face work-related or personal problems. In such situations, workers need quality mental support, but not all can afford psychological consultation. Therefore, it is recommended that employers provide access to psychological counseling services for their staff members to ensure they can discuss their concerns with professionals. Our organization offers these Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), and our services fall into three categories.
Firstly, we provide emergency psychological consultations for employees who have recently experienced personal or work-related accidents. Secondly, our clients can access suicidality assessment, which includes screening for self-harm behaviors and preventing such intentions. Thirdly, we offer intercultural psychiatric programs for workers with different cultural and racial backgrounds.
Our clients within the healthcare industry benefit greatly from these EAPs. According to García-Iglesias et al. (2022), medical workers “are 3–5 times more likely to be at risk of suicide” than the representatives of the general population and workers from other spheres (p. 2). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these rates have increased, and healthcare staff now face the growing prevalence of suicide, burnout, depression, and medical errors (Nikbakht Nasrabadi et al., 2022; Toska et al., 2023).
Medical employees can also suffer from different mental problems because they are responsible for patients’ lives and health. When something goes wrong in their clinical practice, they can blame themselves and find it challenging to cope with stress and pressure. Further, as mentioned by Sari et al. (2023), patient-on-worker “violence is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths and millions of injuries each year, resulting in physical, sexual, reproductive, and mental health problems” (p. 2). Therefore, there is an increased need for healthcare facilities to ensure their workers have access to EAPs.
Emergency Psychology
In the healthcare field, people often encounter unpleasant situations and incidents that may undermine their mental stability. This is why our company offers emergency psychology programs for medical employees. According to Everly and Lating (2017), psychological first aid “may be simply defined as a supportive and compassionate presence designed to stabilize and mitigate acute distress, as well as facilitate access to continued care” (p. 4). Since healthcare staff experience higher rates of distress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, they require such support.
Case Example
To begin with, describe an example of a situation that might occur in a healthcare facility and that needs to be addressed using the concepts of emergency psychology. Evidence and statistics show that there are high rates of patient violence and aggression directed at nurses and other medical workers, and such dangerous cases are common not only in psychiatric units (Toska et al., 2023). A patient can become frustrated with their treatment, misinterpret a medical worker’s smile, or experience severe pain, leading them to show aggression toward employees (Ras, 2023). Therefore, clinics need to care for their nurses and physicians.
Consider a young nurse routinely checking on an elderly patient and repositioning them to avoid bedsores. The man begins to act inappropriately, makes jokes, tries to touch the nurse, and asks her to give him extra pills. When she refuses calmly yet strictly, the patient becomes aggressive, shouts at her, uses inappropriate and degrading language, accuses her of sexual harassment against him, and threatens to learn her home address. The nurse is stressed and scared and cannot continue her duties because she is afraid other patients will become aggressive as well. She blames herself for not reacting professionally and cries for several hours.
Relevance of Psychological Help
In the described scenario and similar cases, it is critical to support medical workers and provide them with psychological support as soon as possible. In this situation, the nurse can no longer care for patients because she feels stressed, humiliated, and upset, and doubts her professionalism and competence. While some experienced healthcare workers have the skills and background to ignore this deviant and aggressive behavior from clients, recently graduated nurses are not mentally prepared for such situations (Toska et al., 2023). At the same time, both experienced and new medical employees require emergency psychological services.
There are consequences of failing to provide psychological support to healthcare workers affected by various emergencies. Firstly, they can face various mental issues after being exposed to patient-on-worker aggression and violence, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety, and panic disorder (Alkaabi et al., 2022; Everly & Lating, 2017). Some employees may want to use various substances to feel better and more relaxed, which leads to addictions, workplace substance abuse, and medical errors (Everly & Lating, 2017). Nurse and physician burnout and shortage are other effects that healthcare facilities face due to the mental health of employees.
Relevant Models and Concepts
Emergency response services we provide are based on different concepts and approaches, and one of them is the Johns Hopkins RAPID model of psychological first aid. According to Everly and Lating (2017), it has three basic goals: meeting the primary mental health needs of employees affected by an emergency, stabilizing their acute behavioral and psychological condition, and mitigating impairment and distress. Some other objectives are to assist in the recovery and facilitate access to continued mental support.
This model has effective steps that help counselors address the primary mental needs of affected healthcare workers and stabilize their psychological condition. Everly and Lating (2017) indicate that the first step is to establish rapport and effective listening so that further phases of the model are successful and can help address all the needs of a worker under stress. Further, assessment is conducted not through tests or mental status examinations but by allowing the person to tell their story and share their feelings.
Next, the specialist prioritizes the needs of the medical worker and chooses an appropriate intervention, which can be “anticipatory guidance (setting expectation), explanatory guidance (positing explanations for the felt reactions), prescriptive guidance (stress management), and even cognitive reframing” (p. 5). Disposition is the last step of the model, after which the affected healthcare worker feels better and can cope with the situation.
There is another approach relevant to providing emergency psychological services. According to Feuer (2021), there is a technique of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) “in which a facilitator helps the rescuer talk about their feelings regarding the incident” (p. 365). Regarding our services, we use them when a medical worker has witnessed an incident in which other people, including their colleagues or patients, were hurt, and this traumatized the worker. This approach allows the medical worker to express their emotions and thoughts, feel understood, and find ways to cope.
Benefits of the Services
These emergency psychological services will bring numerous benefits to the medical workers, their family members, and the healthcare facility as an employer. For instance, employees will receive a confirmation that their leaders care about them and strive to enhance their comfort and satisfaction (Everly & Lating, 2019). This will further strengthen mutual understanding, trust, and respect between employers and workers, resulting in improved relationships and better performance (Limone & Toto, 2022).
Next, family members of nurses and physicians will be less concerned about the well-being of their close ones, and it is expected that, as family dynamics are good, healthcare professionals will be better able to perform their duties effectively and with high quality. Absenteeism and employee turnover will also decrease because staff will understand they can receive psychological support in emergencies, and they will be motivated to continue working for this healthcare organization that cares for their well-being.
Suicidality
Unfortunately, there is a high risk of suicide among healthcare workers, as this population faces various issues and workplace errors and has to care for patients while often ignoring their own needs. According to García-Iglesias et al. (2022), “the pandemic may have precipitated a series of factors such as economic concerns, assessing one’s working conditions as poor, having family members or friends infected, changes in services or functions, and feeling discriminated against or stigmatized by society” (p. 1). Therefore, our company offers suicidality assessment and prevention services to address this concerning trend.
Case Example
It is again effective to provide an example of a situation that can happen in the life of an average medical worker. As mentioned earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic increased the prevalence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among healthcare staff. Consider a nurse who was working in an intensive care unit for several months after the pandemic began. As stated by Nikbakht Nasrabadi et al. (2022), such employees were prone to developing depression and experiencing burnout and tiredness more than their colleagues in other units. This nurse was also tired and stressed and never noticed her husband experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, and he decided not to bother her and try to get better on his own.
Following the deterioration of his condition and subsequent death, the nurse developed severe depression. She blamed herself for possibly bringing the virus from work and infecting her husband, and also for not noticing right away that he was seriously ill. The reason she was experiencing burnout was. After that, her colleagues reported that she showed a decrease in attentiveness and interest in her work. Over the last two years, she had two cases of antidepressant overdose that were marked as accidental, and some other nurses noticed scars and bruises on her body.
Relevance of Psychological Help
In this case, there is an increased need to offer psychological help to this nurse by assessing her suicidality and addressing it. If she does not receive mental support, there will be severe consequences. Firstly, she may continue injuring herself, and if patients or other medical workers notice and report it, the facility might have an ethical dilemma.
On the one hand, she is an unreliable worker who cannot care for patients because she cannot care for herself. On the other hand, there is already a shortage of nurses, and if the employer removes her from her duties, other employees will have an increased workload (García-Iglesias et al., 2022). Dealing with worker suicidal behaviors is never easy for employers, but it is better to address such cases earlier.
Secondly, if she eventually commits suicide and the public learns that she was noticed having injuries and attempting to overdose, the facility will have problems with the government and community. According to recent news, a nurse committed suicide and blamed her employer for not providing comfortable and quality working conditions (Sudhakar, 2023). It is stated that “those in the health care field may avoid talking about their mental health struggles for fear of jeopardizing their licensure and negatively impacting their ability to continue serving in their current roles” (Sudhakar, 2023, para. 8). Some other, less noticeable yet serious effects, can include the impact of her suicide on her colleagues (García-Iglesias et al., 2022). They may develop depression and anxiety because of losing their peer, and the facility will face a reduction in productivity and performance, increased medical errors, and employee burnout.
Relevant Models and Concepts
When psychologists face client suicide, they experience difficulty continuing work and need some basic practices and interventions to be used. These approaches have also been adapted for use in employee assistance programs. For example, a survey participant “reported a need for more open communication in the workplace, peer supports, space to grieve, as well as opportunities to engage in a learning process” (Finlayson & Simmonds, 2019, p. 18).
In our suicidality programs, we use these concepts to better care for healthcare workers. We teach them to grieve properly if they have suicidal behaviors due to the loss of a family member, peer, or patient, and to communicate with their colleagues and others to avoid losing connection with reality (Séguin & Chawky, 2017). These concepts improve the effectiveness of the services our company provides and help us ensure clients’ mental health is stabilized.
Benefits of the Services
The suicidality services we offer will have a positive impact on employers, healthcare workers, and their families. First of all, the risks of suicide among the staff will decrease significantly due to timely assessment and prevention programs that will identify nurses and other employees at risk and help them stabilize their mental state (Mukherjee & Kumar, 2017; Séguin & Chawky, 2017).
The facility’s leadership will be more confident in their healthcare staff, and the rates of medical errors and negligence will drop. Another great benefit is that there will be fewer issues with worker shortages and burnout. As soon as healthcare employees realize that their leadership reduces the stigma around seeking help, they will become more loyal, trust will increase, and they will be more motivated to improve their mental well-being and continue working.
Intercultural Psychiatry
The third category of services that our organization provides includes intercultural psychiatry programs. As noted by Bhugra et al. (2021) and Hooley et al. (2019), one’s cultural background may affect how one reacts to certain triggers and experiences mental health problems, thereby distinguishing them from individuals from other cultures. If an individual of Asian origin works with people of German descent, they may have entirely different reactions to a similar stressful situation, and the Asian employee is at risk of feeling isolated, which affects their performance. Moreover, what helps other employees cope with stress may be ineffective for this worker, so a unique approach is required.
Case Example
As described in previous sections, healthcare workers may face various issues and concerns that undermine their mental state and resilience. Although this refers to all medical professionals, those who differ in their cultural or racial characteristics are at higher risk of developing depression and anxiety and experiencing stress. Consider a healthcare facility that does not promote diversity, inclusion, and cultural awareness, and its workers are not informed about basic ways to show respect and acceptance when communicating with representatives of other cultures.
Then, an immigrant from an Arab state is hired by this facility. As he begins his integration into the workplace, he faces reduced communication, a lack of desire to make himself included, and other problems from his new colleagues. After two months of such attitudes, the immigrant worker develops depression and cannot perform his duties correctly. There are no other employees of Arab origin, and he feels lost, misunderstood, and excluded.
Relevance of Psychological Help
It is evident that without this group of services, healthcare companies might face negative consequences. For instance, conflicts may arise among employees from different racial backgrounds due to limited inclusion and understanding (Everly & Lating, 2017). Employees who are representatives of minority cultures will feel excluded and lack basic tools to maintain good mental health, which will eventually decrease their performance and put them at higher risk of developing depression (Semple & Smyth, 2019). In addition, patient satisfaction rates may decrease because these employees will not be able to provide proper service.
Relevant Models and Concepts
When providing these services, we focus on certain concepts and approaches. Thus, as Everly and Lating (2017) indicate, mental health specialists working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds are expected to demonstrate cultural competency. The latter “is considered to reflect one’s own cultural awareness that then facilitates understanding, communicating, and interacting effectively with people across cultures and is based on openness, trust, equity,” and other qualities (Everly & Lating, 2017, p. 217). Further, our specialists use evidence-based practice to identify the most appropriate approaches to address various psychological conditions and issues. A holistic approach treats every medical worker not as part of the healthcare staff but as an individual.
Benefits of the Services
Ultimately, it is essential to highlight the positive impacts of these programs grounded in intercultural psychiatry. One of the key effects is that on-site interdisciplinary collaboration, peer communication, mutual understanding, and trust will increase and strengthen. Individuals from different cultural backgrounds will become more empowered through our professionals’ support, equipped with tools and methods that help them feel accepted and included (Bhugra et al., 2021).
Healthcare companies will experience fewer conflicts and misunderstandings among employees, which is a significant advantage when working with patients. Further, for medical staff, workers with different cultural values will feel more appreciated and included, which will affect how they act and contribute to the overall positive workplace environment. Eventually, their family members will be confident that they are not discriminated against at work.
Conclusion
To conclude, the relevance of the services our company can offer is high for an organization operating in the healthcare industry. Due to high rates of patient violence, the devastating effects of COVID-19, and cultural differences, medical workers suffer from increased rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, burnout, and suicide. They have to care for their patients and provide the best services, yet lack the capacity and resources to care for themselves properly. Therefore, medical facilities need to ensure their staff members have access to Employee Assistance Programs.
In general, our organization offers three categories of such services that can be particularly valuable to any medical facility and have positive implications for its employees and their families. The first group of programs is emergency psychology, which is helpful because healthcare professionals often encounter emergencies that require immediate on-site interventions.
Secondly, due to the increased risk of suicidal behaviors, we provide suicidality assessments and help prevent self-harm behaviors. These services can also be offered to medical workers who witnessed the suicide of their colleague. Lastly, intercultural psychiatry is also included in our programs, recognizing that people from different cultural backgrounds respond differently to the same emergency.
References
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