Building Workforce Resilience at the Individual and Organizational Levels

Houston Methodist has endeavored to improve the resilience of its health care workforce by using an innovative two-pronged approach to fix the systemic barriers to wellness and well-being, as well as to support individual employees in their work. Programs that began in 2018 became essential during the Covid-19 pandemic, which exacerbated existing strain and created unprecedented challenges for both health care systems and health care workers. Houston Methodist identified three specific initiatives as part of an integrated plan to address resiliency: positive psychology, mindfulness, and intensive rounding for resiliency (referred to as Comfort Rounds). Further, each initiative was designed to address resiliency, primarily or secondarily, at either the individual level or the organizational level, which creates the opportunity to promote uptake, reinforce sustainability, and enhance impact. Data collected on these programs have shown that they reduce stress effectively and make clinicians feel more supported by the organization and their leaders. In addition to the innovative integration of the initiatives, the novel rounding model is focused solely on resilience issues and includes a mental health professional.