Implementing and Evaluating an Empirically Supported Training Program to Enhance Emotional Management Skills and Professional Resiliency in Healthcare Providers

The Behaviour Change Institute (BCI) was created in 2008 within Capital Health to provide healthcare providers with behaviour change counselling skills. These skills are backed by evidence-based theory and competency training methods and are designed to be used by healthcare providers to help their patients change their behaviours. Acquiring these skills involves change for the healthcare provider. Through our work at the BCI we have come to identify the need to help healthcare providers effectively manage their emotions in such situations in order to learn behavior change counselling skills and to continue to use them effectively over time. The ability to effectively manage emotions, including discomfort and distress, may differentiate between individuals who are able to successfully adopt and maintain new behaviours over time from those who do not (Brown, Lejuez, Kahler, Strong, & Zvolensky, 2005). That is, we have identified that there is a significant need to support healthcare providers to more effectively manage emotions in order to help them change.

The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for the Workplace program (ACT-W) is an evidence-based program designed to help individuals manage emotions and stress by learning skills to accept negative feelings, thoughts, and sensations and to move toward valued behaviours (Flaxman, Bond, Livheim, Hayes, 2013). The ACT-W program has been shown to increase the ability to manage emotions and stress (Flaxman & Bond, 2010) and to increase the ability to learn new behaviours (Bond & Flaxman, 2006; Luoma et al., 2007; Varra, Hayes et al., 2008).

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the implementation of the ACT-W training program for healthcare providers through the BCI.