Henry Ford Health System comes up with ways to help employees address their mental health needs

DETROIT – Most large employers have an employee assistance program, but the Henry Ford Health System has taken it one step further.

The hospital group is working to retain healthcare workers by addressing their mental health needs. Healthcare workers have been on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. They’re experiencing burnout, frustration and fear.

The new employee assistant outreach appeared in March of 2020. The behavior medicine department put together a toolkit called Recover and Heal.

Read: Henry Ford Health System reports ‘significant’ increase in COVID hospitalizations

They said because of the burnout they started losing experienced healthcare workers. The program deals with trauma, grief and more.

There is also a Stronger Together Buddy system and currently 150 buddy pairs. The buddy system helps employees support each other so that what happens at work doesn’t spill into households.

There is also a team of mental health professionals ready to go to any given facility when a team leader notices acute stress in their units.

Watch the video above for the full report.


About the Authors

Paula Tutman is an Emmy award-winning journalist who came to Local 4 in 1992. She's married and the stepmother of three beautiful and brilliant daughters. Her personal philosophy in life, love and community is, "Do as much as you can possibly do, not as little as you can possibly get away with".

Kayla is a Web Producer for ClickOnDetroit. Before she joined the team in 2018 she worked at WILX in Lansing as a digital producer.

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