2024 - November 4 Meeting

BMH-EN Meetings
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Follow up Q&A for Dr. Van Rybroek:

  • Scott Blindauer - Is there a lot of staff burnout? Are there any support spaces/amenities for staff themselves?

Yes, staff burnout happens here like anywhere else. Some of it has to do with whatever we should be doing better to assist staff. Some of it has more to do with the staff person’s inner life where we have little to do with it but are easily the ‘cause’ of it from their perspective. One metric for burnout is the vacancy rate – it is noticeably low in this program – currently there are no vacancies in the direct care (CNA+) staff, as one example. Retention like this involves decent pay, good supervision and effective teaming, etc. In the build we created large locker rooms for staff, with lockers and showers, good sized nursing stations with bathroom, technology for safety, and good counter space for EMR. On the hospital campus we have a very large staff gym in a gradually renovated historic building and added gym equipment of every kind, new locker rooms, new audio and video, a Pilates and yoga area, air conditioning, sports flooring plus more. It is available free for staff only and open 24/7. That helps for staff who want to deal with stress through exercise. It also happens we have 400 acres of grounds on Lake Mendota, with many walking paths and lots of nature (currently a lot of deer and turkeys.) At the end of the day, though, burnout is reduced when we have good teams that understand the purpose of the place (which produces meaning if one wants to see it that way) and good supervision that understands and takes input and also directs when needed. It turns out enough staff see their role as important to the youth [in the presentation I talked about what matters most for youth is developing healthy relationships; staff also get a lot for themselves when doing that relationship work – i.e., seeing youth improve, sticking with them when they regress, etc.] and can be energized when they see a bit of a higher purpose to their work than a paycheck alone, etc.

  • Stephen Parker - What EMR system are you using Dr. Greg? Is it a custom system or built off an existing software product?

Cerner is used in the hospital and on MJTC. On MJTC we have an additional system that collects data on certain programs and behaviors [e.g., the Today-Tomorrow data and graphs.] We could not embed it into the Cerner EMR due to cost and kept it for it’s important utility related to individualized programming.

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Research studies posted in the chat: