The Sharp Index Toolkit for Physician and Nurse Advocacy: A Guide for Leaders

Physician, Nurse, and healthcare worker well-being is influenced by many factors, including workload, administrative burden, personal life events, and the emotional stress inherent in providing medical care. Healthcare organizations should take a multi-faceted approach to improving physician well-being, considering not only individual-level interventions but also changes at the system level.

The Sharp Index Toolkit for Physician and Nurse Advocacy for Workplace Improvement can help physicians, nurses, and healthcare workers to advocate for improved mental health and workplace safety in their organizations, as well as providing leaders with a checklist for their efforts. Published in 2023, the issues it raises can be a cornerstone for leaders.

It includes information on the basics of workplace safety, mental health, addiction support, grief support, and ADA compliance, self-assessment tools, effective communication guides, building alliances, advocacy strategies, resources for support, maintenance and follow-up, and a community guide for supporting healthcare workers. It should not be considered legal, healthcare, mental health, or business consulting.

This toolkit should be seen as a starting point and should be adapted and expanded upon to suit the specific context and needs of different workplaces. It was designed with leaders for leaders to create a quick start for improving physician and healthcare worker mental health. We use “Physician, Nurse, Clinical Staff, and healthcare worker” with some flexibility. While many of the resources were designed with physicians in mind, resources and assistance should be available for and designed with multiple stakeholders. System wide transparency and development is necessary for improvement.

Suggestions were developed with input from over 50 leaders including physicians, mental health experts, safety experts, health law experts, nurses, wellbeing officers, trauma workers, innovators, and others.

This was designed to be a conversation starter for healthcare leaders.

The Sharp Index Toolkit for Physician and Nurse Advocacy:  A Guide For Leaders