RESPOND Wellbeing program Healthcare Workers

For healthcare workers including doctors, nurses, allied health, dentists, pathology, imaging and all screening staff, administration and management, catering, cleaning, environmental services, maintenance, security, educators, medical researchers, pharmacy, mental health, personal care attendants, all other support staff.

• Hospitals
• Clinics
• Aged Care Facilities
• Disability services
• First responders

RESPOND is a skill-building program for wellbeing that helps you build skills in emotion and mind regulation for better self care and mental health. RESPOND is also designed to help you develop your people skills, known as soft skills but really hard for lots of people working in healthcare.

It includes:

• "Bite-sized" training videos that you can watch in a few minutes at a time (12 - 30 mins)
• Curated library of excellent resources, helping you sort through the mountains of info out there – books, scholarly articles, videos
• An extensive library of meditations specifically developed for healthcare workers, to help you embed your skills
• A Private "CLOSED" Facebook community of health care workers who are committed to wellbeing.

RESPOND has been designed and developed to meet the gap that health professionals have revealed exist in their employer’s wellbeing programs. Over and over we have heard the same two stories. The first story that the existing wellbeing programs do not offer much about mental health and the second that existing services offered by the employer were for when there was a crisis not for prevention or proactive skill-building.

Many wellbeing programs focus on physical health, things like giving up smoking, building an exercise habit, eating more healthy food. These programs are fantastic.

RESPOND is solely focused on helping you develop your skills to maintain your mental health, skills like;

• improving your attention and focus
• adjusting your self talk
• expanding your self awareness
• learning about unconscious bias
• how to manage stress more effectively
• how to develop communication skills for more influence
• understanding your lack of motivation and how you can improve it
• how you can regulate your emotions
• and much more.

RESPOND can help you learn about and develop your self care skills, improve your relationship and communication skills and tune your inner game.

Everyone can experience better mental health and more wellness for the long term if they have the right skills and access to the right resources.

RESPOND Diamond is a whole of workplace program for employers to offer their staff, sponsoring the training, and making it accessible to everyone. RESPOND Diamond offers regular live coaching support to your team.

If you are a decision-maker in healthcare and would like to talk to Sharee about offering RESPOND Diamond to your team please complete the form here and book a time to learn how to RESPOND Diamond can enhance the skills of your team.

RESPOND for individuals is how individual healthcare workers can join our community and feel the support of your colleagues.

Members of RESPOND and RESPOND Diamond come together in the PRIVATE Facebook community however you have joined RESPOND.

RESPOND Diamond is our workplace wellbeing program. For you to join RESPOND Diamond your employer needs to register your workplace with us.

After your employer has partnered with Coaching for Doctors they will share a RESPOND link with you. Once you click on the link you sign in to RESPOND and then you can access everything RESPOND offers. As long as your employer offers RESPOND you have access to all the resources.

RESPOND training is online and recorded so that you can take the courses as many times as you like, at a time that suits you. All the videos are short, 10-25 minutes, so that you can actually fit the learning into your schedule.

RESPOND is much more than a on demand training program. Members receive regular emails to help them keep going with their skill development. These prompts are designed to help you create new habits and embed what you are learning. RESPOND is more than an online course, it is designed to be interactive and supported.

The regular coaching opportunities are offered so that you can ask questions and deepen your learning as you go, at your own pace. We recognise that changing habits and building new skills takes effort and are more likely achieved with support.

The closed PRIVATE Facebook group is a safe space for you to share your learning, to ask questions of the community, and share your successes as you build new habits and try out your new skills.

You should expect that the skills being taught and the resources in RESPOND will help you to respond to your life more effectively…. If ….. you do the work.

You don’t expect to grow your biceps without doing lots of repeated weight lifting. It is the same for your mind, your emotions and your communication. You will not develop any new skill or habit without practice and repetition. If you do the work and engage with RESPOND and all it offers, you will learn lots of cool new skills that can help you be well. We are here to support and encourage you to meet all that life brings in a skilful way.

You should expect RESPOND to respond to your needs. RESPOND is designed specifically for people who work in healthcare, grounded in neuroscience, psychology, leadership research, ancient wisdom and your feedback.

RESPOND came about because of COVID-19 and all the requests we were receiving to help with people’s mental health because we had a reputation for skill development in this space. We were already working in this space because of our concern for healthcare workers, we are committed to your wellbeing because when you are well everyone you care for also has better health. We all do well when you are well.

RESPOND is a skill building program. It is not therapy or counselling. People do say they feel better when they participate in RESPOND because it is a proactive, empowered choice to build your own skills. It is also often therapeutic to be in community and to connect with others who have shared goals.

Sharee Johnson is a registered psychologist and credentialed Coach with the International Coaching Federation. She is also an accredited meditation teacher, an experienced mindfulness facilitator and practitioner, including senior consultant with global company Potential Project and the owner of Coaching for Doctors. Sharee has been the coordinator of the VicRoads EAP program and has run her successful private counselling practice for many years. Sharee is one of Australia’s leading specialist doctor coaches.

Sharee has a team of associates she works with including experienced doctors, psychologists, executive coaches and mindfulness practitioners.

RESPOND is a specialist program designed specifically for people who work in health care. It focuses on one thing – helping you to maintain your mental health.

RESPOND is focused on helping you build skills, especially internal mental health skills and interpersonal skills. It is a proactive program that is about prevention. It is specifically for people who work in health and seeks to reduce the risk of mental illness and burnout by teaching you skills and helping you learn to use them.

We recognise that working in healthcare can be stressful. Workplaces are busy and you are often exposed to heartache, distress and loss just by virtue of being in the vicinity. Health care does not always leave time or space to help you reflect and learn. The message in health care has often been toughen up or go somewhere else. We understand that the “old school” or “traditional” toughen up strategy doesn’t work a lot of the time.

RESPOND Diamond and RESPOND for individuals can both you to develop lots of tools and strategies for wellbeing. They are accessible anywhere. RESPOND is not on your work intranet, we host the program, so you can feel confident that your privacy is assured. You can learn what you need to add to your toolbox and find the skills that will enhance your wellbeing and mental health in your own time and in privacy, without fear or judgement from your colleagues.

Coaching for Doctors hosts the RESPOND portal. We do not share your information with anyone else. We do provide global statistical information to your employer. For instance, we share the number of people who are using RESPOND and which components of the program are being used the most. We also share wellbeing data from the wellbeing surveys that we invite people to complete periodically.

This sharing of data helps us to talk together about what might be better for everyone’s mental health at work. If your employer is providing you with RESPOND then they are in regular conversation with us about what needs to develop at your workplace. This sort of ongoing conversation can help us all improve our understanding of what will help healthcare workers be well. Feedback and conversation with people outside your organisational culture can bring new insights that are not easily noticed by those inside the system.

*This is only applicable to RESPOND Diamond where the employer sponsors RESPOND for all employees. No personal data collected by Coaching for Doctors or SKJ Consulting is ever shared with a third party. See more on Terms and Conditions here.

RESPOND is based on many established theories and models from psychology, neuroscience and organisational theory including, but not limited to:

• Relational Frame Theory
• Acceptance and Commitment Training
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• Positive Psychology
• The Integral Model
• Coaching Theory
• Motivation Theory
• Change Management Theory
• Stages of Grief Model

RESPOND has wellbeing measures built into it’s design. It will take time to learn about it’s impact on individuals and on the workplace more broadly. Wellbeing programs can take several years to demonstrate their impact, particularly those that are focused on prevention.

All of the skills being taught in RESPOND have significant research to support their efficacy. They have been included due to their demonstrated impact in other settings such as in counselling or coaching programs, online programs or in leadership programs.