Using Text Messages to Support Nurse Well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant nurse stress and contributed to burnout for a number of reasons, including but not limited to personal protective equipment shortages, furloughs, overtime, reassignment to unfamiliar work environments, and alternate staffing patterns, all of which contribute to grief, loss, fear, and anger. While the nursing profession and employers offered support and psychological first-aid resources, there was a disconnect in effectively linking stressed nurses with these needed resources. An innovative statewide pilot project in Arizona, RNconnect 2 Wellbeing, was created to determine whether nurses might respond to and use supportive resources via opt-in text messages. Over a 12-week enrollment trial, 2997 nurse users opted to receive brief, twice weekly, well-being text messages about subjects, such as increasing awareness, self-care, and gratitude. By the end of the pilot, 2777 nurse users remained enrolled (7% opt out). Convenience evaluation surveys were conducted at midpoint (n = 294) and pilot completion (n = 404). Satisfaction with the messages ranged from 73% to 86%. Forty-eight percent indicated they had integrated the resources into their daily lives. RNconnect 2 Wellbeing, an innovative and cost-effective approach to communicating with nurses, has laid the groundwork for the use of technology via brief text messages to improve nurse well-being.

Health care leadership academy: a statewide collaboration to enhance nursing leadership competencies.

Competency in leadership skills is necessary to manage in the current chaotic health care environment and proactively participate in the creation of a better environment. Although interest in pursuing a career in health care is growing, lack of leadership competence contributes to employee frustration and dissatisfaction, which directly and indirectly impacts the supply of health care workers. To addressthe lack of leadership competence and its disturbing consequences, the Arizona nursing community designed a model for nursing leadership and created a partnership to provide a high-quality, affordable leadership education program focused on enhancing the leadership competencies of frontline nursing supervisors.