Abstract

In many health care organizations, the needed support for second victims, or care of the caregiver, is lacking or unavailable. This was true of the Inova health system organization at the conception of this project. This paper describes the process of establishing the need for a peer support program and evaluating the effectiveness of the selected peer support training program to meet the needs of the peer supporters, the team members they serve, and the organization. Unfortunately, unanticipated and tragic events will happen to excellent health care team members; the results are often anxiety, depression, guilt, and fear. The effects of being a second victim can result in post-traumatic stress and compassion fatigue, with some team members ultimately leaving the profession or even worse, committing suicide. After obtaining Institutional Review Board approval, the project team initiated a quality improvement project to evaluate the effectiveness of the peer support training during the implementation of a peer support program in all five of the Inova hospitals in Northern Virginia. Of the 45 team members who signed up for the initial peer support training, 17 agreed to participate in the project in the preintervention phase, and 15 participated in the postintervention phase. Although the training materials utilized were found to be effective, opportunities for improvement that included limitations such as available resources at night and on weekends, logistics, and information support tools were revealed.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 28495706; ProQuest document ID: 2543674871. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Karen Adamouski-Marion, DNP, MSN, NE-BC, CPHQ

Sigma Membership

Theta Tau

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Quality Improvement

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Peer Support, Second Victim, Clinician Support, Support Programs

Advisor

Christina Garcia

Second Advisor

Kathy Helak

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing

Degree Year

2021

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2021-07-30

Full Text of Presentation

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