Burnout: Data + Tools For Healthier Frontline Leaders

Background

Elite athletes and military units have access to tools and resources to help them understand their stress and how to recover from it, in order to get longevity in their career.

Solution

Arena Labs began placing physiology sensors on frontline staff in our partner hospitals for three key reasons:

1. Get clear physiology data on stress to better understand burnout and the impacts of pressure.
2. Provide staff with insights on their own physiology for awareness and education.
3. Train teams with performance tools so that they can feel agency in staying calm during the demands of a job on modern medicine’s front lines.

At a Level 1 Trauma Center, Arena Labs deployed sensors to 20 Nurse Managers over the course of six weeks. All Nurse Managers were given an Introduction to Stress and Performance on Day One, and provided with a sensor. All participants wore the sensor 24 hours per day, and answered a daily questionnaire about how stressful their day was and how much they felt they were able to cope with that stress.

At the midway point, Arena Labs ran a 3-hour workshop to introduce and train three key performance tools:

1. Visualization: The power of seeing and training calm
2. Breathing: Awareness and breath control
3. Inner Dialogue: Using inner voice for calm and confidence

Results

1. 1. Stress Management Techniques show early promise for frontline leaders.
      

      Becoming aware of stress and/or coping resources may improve the perception (minor increase in DRES) of the impact of stress on the work day. There was a big difference between how the stress is perceived between work days and days off.

   2. When nurse managers are under pressure or have hard days, coping mechanisms impact how those events impact cardiovascular stress response.
      

      The higher heart rate response to a low, or more negative, DRES score is clear during work days and during the associated night’s sleep.

   3. In this population of nurses, exercise resulted in 1) improved ability to cope with stress, and 2) improved sleep.
      

      Nurse Managers experienced lower heart rate during both daytime and sleep in cases of exercise for 4+ days of the total 15.