DOMAIN 1: RESILIENCE-BUILDING, STAFF HEALTH, AND WELLNESS

Item 2

To what extent does your organization monitor the impact of STS on the well-being of all staff using a self-assessment tool (e.g., STSS, Professional Quality of Life [proQOL])?

Strategies:

  • Provide access to self-assessments related to STS and wellness and encourage staff to use them on a regular basis (e.g., quarterly or every six months). However, it is essential that agencies do not require staff to share the results of their self-assessments and that self-reported STS levels do not influence performance evaluations.
  • Share the self-assessments and encourage staff to use them on a regular basis. Self-assessments can also be completed by staff during individual supervision or team meetings to allow for interpersonal processing of the experience. Staff should not be asked to share the results of self-assessment, but discussion can focus on their reaction to their scores (e.g., did anything surprise them, did they think their score would be lower or higher).
  • Supervisors play a critical role in helping staff become more aware of their STS and in monitoring their well-being. Supervisors should encourage staff to use self-assessments related to STS and wellness on a regular basis and should also use these self-assessments to monitor their own STS and well-being.

Implementation Resources:

Assessments

STS Assessments

  • Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS), a 21-item measure of STS with subscales for intrusion, avoidance, arousal, and negative alterations in cognition and mood.19
  • Professional Quality of Life Scale (proQOL), a 30-item measure with subscales for compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress).20
  • Moral Injury and Distress Scale (MIDS), an assessment developed by the National Center for PTSD of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, measures the impacts of moral injury that may adversely affect direct service professionals, health care providers, first responders, and those who have served in the military and is designed to measure symptoms of moral injury that have occurred over the previous month.

Well-Being Assessments

  • Self-Care in Your Workplace Questionnaire asks individuals how they promote their own self-care in the workplace, including physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
  • Self-Care Assessment assesses individual self-care across five domains: physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and workplace/professional.
  • Personal Balance Wheel,21 a color-coded self-assessment based on an indigenous medicine wheel that evaluates balance in spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental domains. For more information or to obtain a copy of this scale, please contact arabideau@umontana.edu or scrossbear@centurytel.net.

Select Action Plan to begin to organize and implement next steps.

Jump To Previous Strategy
Jump To Next Strategy