Wellness and Resilience

The mission of our POWER (Promoting Overall Well-being Engagement and Resilience) in Pediatrics initiative is to support individuals and groups in our department as we navigate the stressors in our system through programs and initiatives that will reach and support everyone in Pediatrics. POWER’s vision is to create a departmental culture of well-being, engagement, and resilience with the following values:

• Empowering every individual to take an active role in building a community-oriented and supportive environment
• A multi-level, multidisciplinary effort to prevent burnout and moral injury
• Unifying well-being efforts across the department, including paying attention to what has worked at other institutions
• Engaging the science of well-being, including the principles of CBT, DBT, and trauma-informed care for our community at large
• An evidence-based approach to measure the impact of programs and initiatives 

Initially, department leadership launched POWER in Pediatrics in January 2020 to support our health care providers and learners through the challenges and stressors anticipated in our system as we transitioned to a new electronic record, EPIC. The department was fortunate to have POWER in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and has grown POWER’s activities to meet new challenges.

POWER Advisory Board

The interdisciplinary POWER Advisory Board, with representation from multiple divisions and disciplines, continues to promote and support well-being initiatives throughout the department. The board co-chairs, supported by Marina Catallozzi, MD, MSCE, and Hannah Strauss, MBA, are:

• Michelle Bombacie, MS Dipl. Ac. (NCCAOM), Manager, Integrative Therapies Program, Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, & Stem Cell Transplant
• Casey Mason, MD, MS, third-year pediatric resident and a residency wellness lead
• Art Smerling, MD, faculty in Pediatric Critical Care and Hospital Medicine

Advisory Board Members: Dara Steinberg, PhD (Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant); Tina Leone, MD (Neonatology); Julie Khlevner, MD (Gastroenterology); Sabrina Law, MD (Cardiology); Rose Chapman Rodriguez, NP (Nurse Practitioner Program Director); Susanne Bifano, MPS, LCAT, ATR-BC, MSEd (Child Life); Amelia Warshaw, MD (Pediatric Resident); Kanwal Farooqi, MD (Cardiology).

Board co-chairs meet weekly to develop a range of activities to engage our pediatric clinicians, staff, and learners. Additionally, the board meets monthly and continues its collaboration with the Columbia University Irving Medical Center cross-campus Wellness Leadership Team, led by Lourival Baptista, MD, to increase our capacity and resources in wellness and support.

2022 Initiatives

This past year the POWER team supported the following initiatives and programs:

POWER Newsletter

Beginning in February 2022, the POWER newsletter transitioned from weekly to monthly distribution for members of the department. Each issue highlights how an advisory board member incorporates wellness within his or her division.

Maslach Burnout Index and Areas of Worklife Survey

The first wave of the Department of Pediatrics' Maslach Burnout Index (MSBI) and Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) overlapped with the start of the pandemic, and in 2022 learners, staff, and faculty in the department had a second opportunity to fill out the survey and other items related to departmental well-being. This data will help the POWER board better understand the changing needs of our faculty and staff, including how to support individual wellness and create a scaffolding within the department to amplify connection and gratitude. The POWER co-chairs also had the opportunity to contribute to the design of CUIMC’s center-wide wellness survey.

The Healthy Monday Employee Wellness Initiative

The Healthy Monday Employee Wellness Initiative provides all faculty, trainees, and staff across CUIMC with weekly self-care resources to help refresh their mindset and achieve their wellness goals, potentially leading to a decrease in stress and burnout. Through short surveys and questionnaires, the program assesses the most effective way to disseminate and implement activities. Pediatrics members Dr. Elena Ladas and Michelle Bombacie are among the co-leaders of the program.

POWER Holiday Pop-Up Wellness Wagons

In response to the surge of patients with severe illness around the holidays, POWER sponsored the POWER Wellness Wagon, which brought holiday music, snacks, activities, aromatherapy, murals, succulent plants, and other items to our hard-working providers to support their wellness and help them rejuvenate while at the hospital. POWER Advisory Board members traveled through inpatient wards, the residency program lounge and educational conferences, and temporary locations of the Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology & Stem Cell Transplantation to deliver the cheer and treats.

Growing Our Reach

In an effort to expand the outreach of the POWER initiative, we collaborated with other programs at Columbia and continued to establish alliances with local partners in the community. Collaborators and projects in 2022 included:

• Columbia Work Life: Kevin Myers of Columbia Work Life instructed the POWER Advisory Board on ergonomic techniques that board members could bring back to their teams.
• CUIMC’s Narrative Medicine StudioLab: POWER collaborated with CUIMC’s Narrative Medicine StudioLab and photographer Gail Albert Halaban and illustrator Benjamin Schwartz on how to expand the department’s wellness toolkit with photography and drawing to help build resilience.
• Alfano Family Arts in Medicine Studio: Nitza Danieli, artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum and director of the Alfano Family Arts in Medicine Studio in the Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology & Stem Cell Transplantation, hosted a guided tour of the Cloisters, and helped attendees find connections between art and medicine.
• Columbia Children’s Board: John Workman, a member of the Children’s Board at Columbia and of the board of Pony POWER Therapies farm in New Jersey, invited a group of pediatric residents, and members of the cardiology and integrative therapies teams, to a mini-retreat at the farm. The outing provided attendees a chance to engage in mindful exercises with the horses, which was morale-building, rejuvenating, and fun! The big takeaway: how the group’s interactions with each other and with the horses mirrored the patient-clinician dynamic.

Tripledemic Support

The POWER team continued to collaborate with Cope Columbia to ensure that department members had access to critical information about managing grief and fostering resilience during the tripledemic. Specifically, POWER continued to offer access to 1:1 support with psychiatry. The team returned to offer grand rounds. Finally, the team met with several leaders in the department to offer guidance and training in leadership during the continued challenges of the pandemic.

ELEVATED POWER Initiative

Through the ELEVATED (Ensuring that the Learning Environment Values Anti-Racism) POWER Initiative, the POWER team has continued to work closely with the department's Vice Chair for Education (Marina Catallozzi, MD, MSCE), Associate Vice Chair for Education, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (Linda Aponte Patel, MD), Associate Vice Chair for Education and the Learning Environment (Hetty Cunningham, MD), and the Pediatric Diversity & Inclusion Council (PDIC) as well as others at Columbia University Irving Medical Center to compile resources and offer workshops to educate faculty, staff, and learners about the impact of bias and privilege, and how to dismantle systemic racism and its impact—to move beyond solidarity to action.

ELEVATED POWER in Pediatrics continues to work with divisions and teams to better understand department members' new and emerging needs during these times of continuing challenges.