The pandemic has exacerbated a pre-existing mental health crisis, burnout crisis, as well as a nursing/physician shortage crisis. Regardless of the challenges facing the healthcare industry, providing the proper health and wellbeing supports to your hospital employees is crucial. With varying personal needs and adult-learning styles, employees must have access to targeted solutions that not only span digital engagement but those that are experiencified, and to take it one step further, “gamified”. Also of equal importance to an experiential program are live coaching support services, and a diverse network of health partners to refer to if community members are facing challenges.
What Is An Experiential Personal Growth Program?
An experiential personal growth program is one that engages people into an experience – and helps them grow. It’s a holistic model for addressing the growth process, which comes from Kolb’s experiential learning theory. Kolb’s theory is a well-known educational theory used in higher education. Satori has pulled some of these experiential concepts into its innovative personal development program for the healthcare workspace.
Experiential training for medical professionals is a rising topic of discussion. Some programs are implemented through short leadership retreats for senior managers – the 4-day off-site type of retreats. While others incorporate leadership in their regular trainee curriculum, such as a 10-minute huddle before the workday. Experiential personal growth programs such as The ProMind Experience puts employees at the centre of what they need to know to be healthy and manage stress.
Experiential growth establishes the foundation for continued personal development in all areas of their lives. Additionally, the mindset coaching that we do in The ProMind Experience goes above and beyond the standard “stress management/burnout” trainings that are currently offered. We have built in sustainable change efforts that further supports the health and wellbeing of health professionals in a pro-active way.
Psychologist David Kolb
Following the Chinese proverb, ”I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand” Psychologist David Kolb, a pioneer in experiential learning, works on a four-stage cycle of learning. Kolb identifies the following four components necessary for one to experience personal growth.
All of these are included in our workplace health and wellness programs to adequately support staff development.
- Concrete experience – Active involvement in the experience.
- Reflective observations – Analyzing the experience
- Abstract conceptualization – Drawing conclusions and evaluating what trainees have grasped.
- Active experimentation – Implementing what has been learned.
Source: Queens University.
Experiential Engagement Of The Workforce To Retain Nurses
During the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, some staff continued in COVID-19 roles. Others left, and returned to their pre-pandemic roles after being re-deployed for months. As well, many nurses were fired for not being vaccinated, leaving the healthcare industry in a serious bind. While teams, roles and workplace norms may be permanently changed, it would be prudent to prioritize the personal development of staff in an active and engaging way.
The evidence suggests that hospitals need to support their frontline staff’s mental and physical wellbeing. This is a priority for nurses moving forward. Thus, by embracing an experiential program like The ProMind Experience, organizations are positioning themselves to support the development in a sustainable way. If you check-out our program page for The ProMind Experience, you will notice that it is not an ordinary workplace health program.
ProMind is an experience that engages the hospital community in a holistic way, taking everyone beyond just the physical components of health (like “hit the gym” rhetoric). We’re really meeting them where they’re at. We’re taking like-minded individuals on a journey of nourishing their bodies, and becoming inspired to shift and grow to become Mindful Clinicians. Satori and its team is working with them over 6 modules to push the dopamine button and help them take action – something that isn’t always easy during difficult times.
Think Oprah’s Favourite Things – her annual giveaway. She provides her viewers with a powerful giveaway experience. Satori hopes to provide a similarly engaging experience in its hospital wellness program, as a way of bridging the gap between short workplace in-services, the Employee Assistance Program, and staff’s extended health benefits.
Personal Development As Democratic Rights
At Satori, we believe that being able to take time out for oneself to be healthy is a democratic right. A personal development program like Satori’s The ProMind Experience offers an opportunity to revolutionize how you engage your employees within themselves. In order to develop leaders from within, they require a well-rounded approach to personal reflection, personal wellness and an opportunity to take a pause from the everyday grind.
It’s not enough to just present stress-management in-services once or twice throughout these challenging times, nor is it enough to refer out to counselling services. Studies show that offering repeated opportunities for the practice of new information and strategies vastly improves learning and skill-building. This applies to both, in the quantity of what’s learned and the quality of the application – both of which are considered in The ProMind Experience.
If you want to dig into Kolb’s biography, check it out here.
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