ACUTE CARE, INC. supports CEO Coalition’s Declaration of Principles for the physical and emotional safety and just treatment of all who work in healthcare.
In early 2021, CEOs from leading hospitals and health systems across the U.S. convened virtually to examine standards of safety and trust for healthcare team members at every level of their organizations. Their goal was to collectively take action to protect the well-being of these essential team members and ensure that they have the systems, tools, technologies, and resources they need and deserve to feel safe at work.
Declaration of Principles
We witnessed selfless acts of courage, care, and compassion from our nation’s healthcare team members during the COVID-19 pandemic. Safety is at the heart of protecting our healthcare workforce, which means being safe from physical and emotional harm and free from all forms of inequity and racial injustice. Workplace violence, burnout, and disparities existed long before the outbreak of COVID-19. The pandemic has, however, exacerbated the factors contributing to workplace violence, created an environment of unprecedented stress, and exposed the impact of systemic inequities and racial injustice on the well-being of healthcare team members.
We believe a renewed and expanded definition of safety is needed to restore trust, recruit and retain individuals to the healing professions, enable care to be provided with the greatest skill and humanity, and ensure the well-being of every person working in healthcare. We commit to:
- Investing in processes and technologies that reduce emotional and cognitive burdens on team members and restore human connection to the healthcare experience.
- Creating practices and policies that advance open communication between team members and leaders so people feel safe to speak up, bringing their full selves to work.
- Providing resources to assess and support team members’ emotional, social, and spiritual health, and alleviating the stigma and deterrents to seek support.
Promoting Health Justice:
- Declaring equity and anti-racism core components of safety, requiring explicit organizational and health equity-focused policies and practices to advance diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
- Implementing a zero-harm program for care team members to eliminate workplace violence, both physical and verbal, whether from team members, patients, families, or community members.
- Ensuring that all healthcare organizations can procure and provide evidence-based personal protective equipment, technology, tools, and processes that healthcare team members need to do their jobs safely and care for patients.
Our ability to build trust and provide the care patients require and deserve is dependent on the physical and emotional safety and the just treatment of all those who provide or support patient care. We commit ourselves to this new definition of safety to ensure that no healthcare team member will have to sacrifice their personal safety, health, identity, or well-being to do their jobs and care for patients.
ACUTE CARE, INC. supports the mission and mechanisms proposed by the CEO Coalition’s Declarations of Principles as a means to ensure worker safety.
Chief Operating Officer