Ninety-three percent of healthcare workers are experiencing stress and 76 percent say they feel exhausted and burnt out, according to a survey done by Mental Health America in 2020.

Tuesday, we reported on Trinity Health’s new resiliency room to help workers relax and take a break from the daily stress of their jobs.

Across the nation, healthcare workers have been working more since the pandemic began, including in North Dakota, and this has led to more stress on them.

“The theme that we’ve heard from individuals that we’re working with over the last two years has been stress, strain and burnout,” said Jeff Redekopp, quality improvement specialist for Quality Health Associates of North Dakota. “And our system has been overtaxed much more so than normal.”

QHA is an organization that aims to improve the quality of care of North Dakotans by providing support to healthcare workers and providers.

It provides different ways for workers to decompress, including webinars on relational leadership, resiliency and psychological safety.

“Our team is also pulling different resources and tools from different websites around emotional intelligence and around different little activities that people can do at work to give themselves a break,” said Redekopp.

Many of the QHA employees are former healthcare workers, so they understand some of the issues, but they hear about the present-day problems from current workers.

“We’re taking care of people on a daily basis,” said Redekopp. “We’re trying to solve problems and it’s so easy for us to get caught up in the negative of trying to solve those problems and always looking for what’s next.”

The issue that may be the toughest for healthcare workers is knowing when to ask for help.

“To be able to just step back, understand that we’re not perfect, understand that we need to give ourselves grace, and know that we have help,” said Redekopp. “We have support out there if we’re just willing to ask for it.”

Redekopp says the feedback for the resources that QHA offers has been unbelievably positive.