These sessions can be offered virtually or in person at meetings, team retreats, or other events. Most sessions can be scheduled for 60 or 90 minutes, or as an educational series. Contact the Michigan Medicine Office of Counseling and Workplace Resilience at (734) 763-5409 or email counseling@med.umich.edu to inquire about session topics and formats. We can also offer tailored presentations to meet the needs of your team.
Stress First Aid for Healthcare Workers
Stress First Aid (SFA) is a self-care and peer support model developed for those in high-stress occupations. It is a framework to improve recovery from stress reactions by teaching emotional support strategies that help to identify and address early signs of stress in an ongoing way (not just after "critical incidents" or acute stressors). SFA is based on a set of five evidence-based elements that have been linked to resilience and recovery after stress. Goals of SFA include helping connect people to internal and external resources (e.g., coping skills, social support) and teaching colleagues how to support one another.
Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) Training
QPR is an evidence-based program designed to teach individuals to recognize and refer someone at risk of emotional crisis or suicide. This training provides valuable knowledge and skills for understanding risk and protective factors, recognizing early warning signs for emotional crisis, and helping individuals connect to available resources. (90 minutes)
Well-Being & Support in Times of Stress and Change
This session shares practical, research-based principles and practices for recognizing and responding to the impacts of stress and burnout. Participants will learn strategies for coping with stress, loss, building resilience, and caring for their well-being in the midst of acute and ongoing stressors.
Compassionate Leadership
Whether crisis is in the world or within a team, compassionate leaders can acknowledge and respond to painful emotions and promote hope, collaboration, and healing. Participants will learn principles and practices for positive leadership during times of crisis and change. This session is designed for managers and supervisors.
Supportive Conversations About Mental Health
Mental health can be difficult to talk about—especially in the workplace. This session provides education about mental health and the unique stresses and demands of healthcare professionals. Participants will reflect on their own approach to discussing mental health topics, recognize signs of distress in themselves and others, and learn strategies to have supportive conversations about mental and emotional well-being.
The Wisdom of Emotions
Emotions carry important information about our well-being, our needs, and our values, yet it can often be difficult to accept the full range of emotional experiences. This workshop will support participants in cultivating a compassionate and curious approach to their inner emotional life while increasing confidence in their ability to cope through the use of practical emotion regulation techniques.
Creating Joy
When times are tough, how do you find time to rest and reconnect to what matters most? Drawing from positive psychology research, this session teaches strategies for enhancing joy, meaning, and compassion in everyday life. Participants will learn about the importance of gratitude, creativity, and social support to enhance joy—even in times of stress and change.
Resilience and Recovery: Understanding Empathy Fatigue, Secondary Trauma, and Moral Distress
Healthcare professionals routinely encounter joy and loss, hope and suffering, and meaning and difficulty in their daily work, often simultaneously. Holding this complex set of emotional experiences can impact mental health and well-being, in ways that can be both restorative and depleting. This session introduces a trauma-informed, resilience-oriented philosophy that can enhance the resilience and recovery processes after impactful events in the healthcare environment. Participants will learn skills for self-care and colleague support to address the impacts of empathy fatigue, secondary trauma, and moral distress.
A Moment of Pause: Honoring and Working with Loss for Healthcare Professionals
Working in healthcare, we can be touched by experiences of grief and loss with our patients, our colleagues, and in our personal lives. These layers can intersect and can shape how we approach life at work and at home. In this session, participants will discuss how to use practices for self-reflection, compassion, and resilience.
Restoring Collaborative Relationships
Working in a high-demand healthcare environment can impact stress levels and relationships. In this session, participants will discuss sources of strain and overwhelm in teams and learn strategies to move from conflict to effective, satisfying, and collaborative colleague relationships.