Wishing You Greater Wellness this New Year

Welcome 2024! Did you end up making a New Year's resolution?

Well, it is a new year for UConn Health too! Our institutional New Year's resolution is a greater focus on wellness for you - our entire workforce team of clinicians and staffers.

UConn Health cares about your daily well-being in addition to our mission of caring for patients who we all collectively care for directly or indirectly everyday across our growing health system.

UConn Health recently launched a new wellness committee with a dozen volunteers already from across the organization. The wellness committee is co-chaired by Organization and Staff Development's Marisol Cruz, an educational development specialist in Human Resources who is also a trained psychologist.

"UConn Health is a really good place to work," heartwarmingly says Cruz, who has been with UConn Health for 23 years.

"Everyone loves the great people here at UConn Health," says Dr. Jason Carrese, assistant professor of medicine, hospitalist, and committee co-chair. "The focus of our wellness committee is supporting our great people and giving them the best tools to support themselves."

Carrese joined UConn John Dempsey Hospital in 2019. Prior to joining the faculty, he was an internal medicine resident physician training right here at UConn Health from 2016 to 2019.

"It's been exciting to get our wellness committee started, and with so many of our workforce already volunteering to be a part of it," shares Carrese happily. He says the wellness committee has been launched post-COVID 19, a very challenging time in health care, to help hit reset and improve the employee experience and the daily aspects of the workplace.

"Health care is a very stressful work environment, so the more we can help strengthen support for our UConn Health people, all the better," says Carrese.

Thanks to the thoughtful leadership of UConn Heath's interim CEO Dr. Bruce T. Liang and his firm belief in the importance of employee wellness and well-being and preventing burnout, the UConn Health Wellness Committee was born and has begun exploring what new wellness activities and programs can be offered to the UConn Health community.

"The incredible support of UConn Health's leadership team for growing our wellness programming is the biggest and best thing we could ever ask for," says Cruz. "The importance of our employee wellness is coming from the top. It is so important to Dr. Liang and that its importance also cascades down to managers and employees alike at all levels whether you are a clinical provider or staffer. We all need to find time daily when we can to practice self-care and take care of our own health to keep stress low."

Early in 2024 the wellness committee is excited to begin hosting small focus groups over coffee with 15 to 20 UConn Heath employees at a time to hear their feedback on how the institution can truly improve wellness programming. The wellness committee is partnering with the successful wellness center on the Farmington campus to bring about greater program offerings.

Also, Carrese has been leading a new initiative to better understand the current status of employee well-being as well as ways to measure the impact of any planned interventions. The goal is to make adjustments and improvements, to find out what's working in some places that may be replicated in others while also acknowledging that everyone has different stressors and oftentimes the best solutions come locally. The goal is for all employees to come to work and feel that they can thrive.

If you haven't set your New Year's resolution or intentions just yet, don't worry. Cruz and Carrese have some recommendations for you already, as the committee's hard work is already underway to enhance programming with the planned focus groups and understanding the needs of employees.

"Please take care of your health and yourself," stresses Cruz. "Find time to step away from your work even if its five minutes at a time to simply reset and de-stress. Taking short breaks for yourself or a lunch break will go a long way to reducing your stress level at work, improving your and your co-worker's work environment, the patient care experience of UConn Heath, and even maybe your stress level even outside of the workplace too."

In addition to keep moving your body throughout the workday and making sure you are getting up from your workstation for breaks, the co-chairs also highly recommend that you practice positive self-talk and try to live in the present, enjoy the moment, and also enjoy the present with others around you at work. Try to make time daily to connect with your colleagues and share your positivity with them. It will help improve their work life experience too.

"Taking care of my own wellness, whether it's sitting a few minutes in silence to reflect or a longer exercise workout, taking these breaks helps me personally with the stressors of work and life, and truly keeps me well and happy," shares Cruz.

Carrese agrees.

"Self-care is so important for everybody, especially all of us in health care," he says. "If we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of others."

The co-chairs urge you to consider taking a wellness class this new year or participating in other wellness activities. The Wellness Committee looks forward to rolling-out new programming very soon at the Wellness Center, and even offering additional options for employees working at our varied buildings and off campus locations.

Stay tuned, UConn Health!

UConn Health and its new Wellness Committee wishes everyone a very happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year!

"Remember, we all have stressors in our life at work and at home," says Cruz. "Our wellness committee wants to help all members of our UConn Health family achieve greater peace in their day."

Carrese concludes, "We all went into health care to help other people. It is vital that we keep each other well too. With the right support, and together, we are all capable of amazing things as we carry our shared purpose in life helping others."