Rachel Whittaker, MS, RN-BC, CPN
Clinical Education Specialist
Allison Perry BSN, RN
Wellness Champion
Trish Julian BSN, RN, CPN
Associate Clinical Manager
Laura Jaramillo BSN, RN
Charge Nurse Liaison
Wellness Champion
Not pictured:
Terri Ream BSN, RN
Charge Nurse Liaison
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Healthy Nurse Healthy Nation
Creating Wellness and Resiliency
Fundamental wellness promotes personal resiliency and wellbeing. After evaluating workplace wellness through surveys
and open forums, however, a team of nurses found that frontline staff were experiencing moral distress, compassion
fatigue, burnout, dissatisfaction and poor work-life balance.
Transformational leadership invoked an evidenced-based strategy powered by a change management plan and
partnership with frontline staff. Their project had four major aims:
1
Align with the
American Nursing
Association’s Healthy
Nurse, Healthy Nation
recommendations
2
Recruit unit-based
Wellness Champions
3
Implement real-time
recognition
4
Promote access to
wellness resources
The project kicked off on two 48-bed units within a pediatric tertiary center, with over 200 team members. With
support from key stakeholders, Wellness Champions began creating awareness around the various hospital wellness
resources already available and implemented Wellness Wednesdays, which provided Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation
initiatives and Vitality information.
The champions also socialized the use of the EZ Thanks App through our Mile Above recognition program. With these
key components in place, the team resurveyed the staff and saw an increase in all areas of workplace wellness. Just
90 days after the recruitment of Wellness Champions, they also saw a twofold increase in the use of the EZ Thanks App.
While evidence-based nursing practice calls the profession to promote self-care with patients, nurses must also
engage in a journey of individual and team resiliency. This team showed that by doing so, the culture will shift into
building healthy workforce communities.
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The Kali Whittle
Resiliency Conference
Healthcare is fast-paced, demanding, continually changing
and tightly regulated, a combination of factors that can lead
to moral distress, compassion fatigue, anxiety, secondary
trauma and burnout. That’s why the Resiliency Collaborative
at Children’s Hospital Colorado puts on the annual Kali Whittle
Resiliency Conference.
Thanks to financial support from the Kali Whittle endowment
fund, this conference brings together resiliency experts to create
opportunities for peace and healing and to ensure nurses and other
care providers have the tools they need to nurture and honor each
other, creating a supportive and encouraging community.
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