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Helping staff help themselves to health

Nurse Leader Weekly, March 27, 2006

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Natalie is a registered nurse on your unit working 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. She is hard-working and reliable and is a favorite with patients. She is also seriously overweight and complains of feeling "very tired all the time." Natalie expresses a desire to join a weight-loss program, stating that she needs the support of others who are also trying to lose weight. Your organization has a weight-loss program (offered to employees free of charge) that has had great success helping employees to lose weight, but is only offered twice a week, at 4 p.m.

As a nurse manager, what steps should you take to help Natalie?

Your first instinct may be to request that the weight-loss program be offered at a time when employees from other shifts can attend. However, you need to have some data to back up such a request. The following suggestions will help you to justify expanding or adding health-related endeavors for your staff members:

• Determine whether there is an actual need for additional programs at additional times. How many employees would attend the additional program? The program is offered free of charge to employees, so is the organization willing to spend money to offer it at additional times?

  When proposing either multiple offerings of the same program or new health-related education programs, include in your proposal the potential impact of not offering the programs in your proposal. Incorporate data about the problem the program is designed to address (e.g., obesity, smoking, etc.) and how such problems affect job performance. For example, you could include information about fatigue, its causes, and the ways in which it jeopardizes patient safety.

• Offer the information in another format. If there is not enough interest or if the organization is unable or unwilling to finance multiple offerings of the same program, the information could perhaps be made available to employees in another format (e.g., e-mail, online, self-learning packets, informal meetings).

• Track the efficacy of the program. Even after the program is successfully in place, your work is not done. You must track the effects of such education in terms of reduced sick days, reduced medical errors, or enhanced job performance.

The point to determine is what your organization can do to facilitate employees' health and wellness. Help your organization achieve this goal-it's not enough to recognize that a problem exists. You need to be creative when you problem-solve and always gather objective data to support your ideas.

Editor's Note: This excerpt comes from the HCPro book Fight Fatigue: A Nurse Manager's Guide to Reduce Risk and Revitalize Staff by Adrianne Avillion, DEd, RN. For more information, visit hcmarketplace.com.

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