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29 PATIENT & CAREGIVER EXPERIENCE AMA: 15 steps to care for healthcare workers before, during and after crisis By Kelly Gooch W hile a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic or a natural disas- ter will inevitably cause stressors for physicians and other health professionals, there are steps organizations can take to promote workforce well-being before, during and aer such events, according to the American Medical Association. e AMA provides 15 steps for health systems in a new module, "Caring for the Health Care Workforce During Crisis." ey are: Before crisis 1. Name a chief wellness officer and establish a professional well-being program. 2. Coordinate with hospital incident command system leadership to develop a crisis plan. 3. Support workers' needs for professional competency during crisis reassignments. 4. Identify nonessential tasks that could be delayed or decreased during a crisis. 5. Develop mechanisms to assess stress and needs among healthcare workers. During crisis 6. Keep watch on the situation and develop new crisis-specific support and resources as necessary. 7. Emphasize and embody the importance of leaders' visibility to health- care workers. 8. Connect with other health systems to share and learn. 9. Regularly evaluate stressors and stress level among healthcare workers. 10. Adapt support plans to meet needs as they change. Aer crisis 11. Debrief each unit and profession within the organization. 12. Catalogue lessons learned and update the crisis plan. 13. Implement an approach across the health system to support recovery and restoration among healthcare workers. 14. Honor the dedication and memorialize the sacrifice of the workforce. 15. Resume ongoing efforts to promote thriving employees. n Making personal connections with patients: Thoughts from a psychiatrist amid the pandemic By Anuja Vaidya M onths into the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety about the new coronavirus and its clinical and economic ef- fects has spiked. To help combat this anxiety, physicians should consider adjusting their professional persona to seek a more personal connection with patients, a psychiatrist wrote in an perspective piece for The New England Journal of Medicine. Michael Kahn, MD, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, both in Boston, penned the article. During his four decades in his career, Dr. Kahn said he has slowly become more comfort- able being spontaneous around his patients and sharing personal details, such as "vaca- tion destinations, movies seen, and the like." This does not mean that he shares personal problems with patients, but rather that the gap between his professional and everyday perso- nas has closed. "I feel like a fellow human being as well as a caring technician," he wrote. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the need for that personal connection with pa- tients, especially amid the rise in telehealth. Dr. Kahn said he begins video calls by asking not only how his patients are doing, but also how their family and friends are. The patients in turn ask Dr. Kahn about himself and his family. He also asks for details on how his patients are spending their days, and they share their hobbies, virtual tours of their homes as well as introductions to pets. He concluded: "The current crisis therefore offers an opportunity — owing to our shared vulnerability to the virus — for doctors to rec- ognize more readily facts that can otherwise take years to learn: that we're no different from our patients and that interacting with them in a manner similar to the one we naturally use with nonpatients can be gratifying for them and freeing for us." n