The Kaiser Permanente Fremont Medical Center continues to participate in the KP CARES: Kaiser Permanente Caring Attributes and Resilience to Stress in 2024. The purpose of this study is to 1) assess the effectiveness of the “Enhancing Our Culture of Caring” initiative and its enhanced experiential learning module series by analyzing staff and leaders’ self-assessments of self-care behaviors, evaluating the organization’s caring culture, and measuring the prevalence of compassion fatigue before and after the intervention, and 2) investigate the lived experiences of clinical nursing staff, including leaders.
This study has two primary goals. The first goal is to evaluate self-care, leadership caring behaviors, organizational practices, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, compassion satisfaction, bias awareness, bias mitigation self-efficacy, and bias mitigation practices at baseline, immediately after, and six months post-intervention. This evaluation is based on participation in an experiential education program grounded in Dr. Jean Watson’s Human Caring Theory and the 10 Caritas Processes. The second goal is to gain insight into the lived experiences of clinical staff who have been actively practicing and leading at the bedside during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Winchell Kuttner, DNP, RN, CPHQ and Shiny Thomas, RN, are co-investigators of this qualitative study exploring a curriculum designed to cultivate healthcare professionals educated in resiliency through the Caring Science framework. The study aims to enhance resilience in healthcare ambassadors, preparing them as leaders in Caring Science, HeartMath, and Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity. Key themes identified include self-compassion, mindfulness, burnout, mutual respect, and bias awareness.