HASTINGS, Neb. (KSNB) – After decades in the emergency room, Ronda Ehley, Chief Nursing Officer at Mary Lanning Healthcare in Hastings, still carries the emotional scars — not just from what she’s seen, but from how the public’s view of healthcare has changed.
“Our world has changed since COVID,” Ehley said. “I never thought I would experience a pandemic in the United States.”
Ehley says that people’s view of her job changed rapidly during the pandemic, adding stress on the entire medical profession.
“Things were so unknown. Things changed every day. It was really high stress for our staff and our providers,” Ehley said. “We’re still coming out of it, yet, I think the challenge that we face today as providers is the patients.”
“We went from what we called heroes to zeros,” Ehley recalled. “Patients are angry. People are just angry. We deal with, even in our community, a lot of violence towards our healthcare providers.”
As the pandemic pushed on, this behavior took a toll on doctors and nurses, who felt like they couldn’t help people who could be treated because of misinformation.
“I think sometimes our providers try so hard to do the right thing, and when that doesn’t work, it does stress them out,” Ehley said. “I think the way our providers have to deal with it is they have to be confident. They have given the information they need. They’ve explained the risks, the benefits, and we have [patients] sign a refusal. They’ve just gotten to that point. It’s been tough for our providers to settle into that, that some people will just say, ‘No.’”
Ehley said that this change in the way that the public sees medicine takes a major toll on doctors, and makes them feel like they have failed, and that they are helpless.
“We have scientific evidence based practice behind us. We don’t just pull things out of the air and do them,” Ehley said. “You can’t google stuff and know what we know. I think there’s a bit of helplessness, but I think there’s also a bit of anger.”
These emotions are hard for doctors to deal with, because they feel as if they are the healers, not the ones that need healing.
This leads doctors to bottle up their feelings, which can lead to depression, addiction, and other side effects. Once doctors have these issues, they feel like there is no one to turn to out of fear of losing their license to practice.
Every state but Nebraska and California have a Physician Health Program, or PHP, which allow doctors struggling with mental health or addiction issues to work with the state’s medical board to ensure they don’t lose their license.
PHPs help doctors communicate directly with the state’s health board to give them a layer of protection. This way doctors don’t lose their license, and if they do they can get it back easier.
While Nebraska doesn’t currently have a program like this, Doctor Joann Schaefer, who was the Chief Medical Officer for the State of Nebraska, says the state is working on it, but she isn’t waiting for the state to solve the problem.
“Medicine is hard,” Dr. Schaefer said. “And up until now, there hasn’t been a truly 100% safe place for a physician to call and get help.”
Dr. Schaefer served as Nebraska’s Chief Medical Officer for over 11 years, and during that time she saw how physicians struggled and felt like they had nowhere to go to.
“I was one of the people that would sign the suspensions and the revocations of licenses,” Dr. Schaefer said. “And when you look back at in the history of so many of the physicians, it started with major life events before they went off the rails.”
That is why she, along with a few other supporting physicians, founded LifeBridge. The group is a confidential organization that tries to help doctors before an issue becomes serious enough for board intervention.
“In a public health perspective we’re trying to work way upstream,” Dr. Schaefer said. “Before there are any problems.”
This program is one of the first of its kind, and Nebraska is the only state the group currently operates in.
The hope is that Nebraska doctors wouldn’t need a program that involves the state’s medical board so doctors will feel more free to reach out for help.
The program specializes in coaching medical professionals on how to curb these issues and thoughts before they could impact a doctor’s performance.
“We have a variety of different topics that we talk about everything from burnout to stress to there was a bad event or a bad outcome and it’s really tugging at the position, causing a lot of stress,” Dr. Schaefer said. “A physician can call and get coaching, and so there’s no need for board involvement. The board is absolutely not aware of anybody that we coach. Nobody is aware. It is 100% confidential. We don’t give any reports to the Board of Medicine, the legislature, employers, nothing.”
LifeBridge is funded by many hospitals, so its services are free to those who need them. The hope is that by curbing depression and addiction early, hospitals won’t see as much turnover.
“I don’t want physicians to feel lonely and stressed out by themselves. There’s always help out there for them,” Dr. Schaefer said. “We’re here, we’re safe, and we really enjoy doing this. We enjoy helping people, and it’s really made a difference.”
LifeBridge has a long way to go, though, as many medical professionals are used to suffering in silence.
“I think as a nurse, you just, most of the time, you just figure out yourself, ‘How am I gonna deal with this,’” Ehley said.
If you want to contact LifeBridge you can call them at (888) 569-2036 or email them using this form.
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