A Continuation on Maintaining High Staff Morale in a Respiratory Care Department

Abstract

Background: The vision of the RC Dept at CCHMC is to be a leader in improving child health. With the exponential growth and demand for RTs, staff had become less engaged and showed a decrease in morale. Over the last 5 years it has been our mission to change employee morale. The project began by sending a Likert survey to staff. Using the results of that survey we implemented several programs in hopes to increase morale. These implementations helped us increase staff morale by an overwhelming 63% in our first year. In order to sustain this improvement in morale we reevaluate frequently. In 2020 there was decrease in overall staff morale influenced by factors that were a result of the pandemic. We discovered that improving mental health is what staff needed.

Methods: After sending out a survey every few months to the RT department, we identified that mental health is our current area of concern. Improving mental health had a positive impact on staff that were willing to embrace our efforts. With money no longer being the root issue and morale considered to be a separate factor we must now determine how to increase morale during long term circumstances. While we have identified that face-to-face contact from leadership has a positive impact and employees feel they bring positivity to their units, we will now need to integrate these results in a manner that allows leadership to interact as needed while maintaining their management responsibilities and continue the positivity from staff.

Results: Since 2019 there has been an 11% reduction of employees rating their morale level of low. 67% of our current employees rate their morale level as high. 82% of staff doesn't feel supported by their managers. However, leadership and recognition are the lowest ranked influence on morale. Schedule and mental health are the driving factors to increasing morale.

Conclusions: After our latest survey, efforts to increase leadership presence and support will be increased. The division recently switched to matrix scheduling from self-scheduling. We will attempt to bridge gap between self and matrix scheduling. RTs are requesting increase flexibility and more timely responses to emails. 100% of our RTs stated that hearing positive feedback from their patients and families increases morale. The sunflower award is currently in place for families to use to recognize RTs. Promoting this award is a priority. CCHMC offers free mental health resources to all employees, 98% of employees are aware of the services offered. An attempt to increase usage of these wonderful tools will be promoted.