Welcome, everybody. Body. My name is Steve V Weg, and I'm the Associate Director of the IEPI Center for Translating Research into Practice, and we are delighted to have you here today for our inaugural conversation series with scholar of the Month. So here we are. We're delighted to have you here. We're going to be welcoming Professor Stephanie Adel with us. And I want to give you just a few things to think about as we get started. We hope that you will join us in learning more about IUPUI's amazing translational scholarship. We have so many wonderful examples of faculty on campus that do interdisciplinary, community based research that engages folks in the community and our students and our faculty together to find out how we can make this a better place. And it goes across every school and program on our campus, and we're delighted today to launch this opportunity to have some conversations, but we hope that you'll share the excitement that we have with our community. As we encourage you to join us in sharing information in multiple ways. You can follow us on Twitter at Center for Trip. You can certainly join our Facebook page where we try to share some of the highlights of things that are going on. And we even have an Instagram account now. So thank you Nuri Mc Lucas for getting us connected socially to everybody. And we hope that you'll use today as a way to promote this event, and you can use the hashtag I UPI Trip Sclar as you post on your social media channels to get some excitement about what's happening here at I UPI. Our scholars do amazing work, and we like for you to be able to see what they do. So if you're in the community and you're wondering, how can I find out more about what our scholars are doing? We invite you to go to our website at trippy dot e, and you can look up our trip scholars, and you'll notice that we have our featured scholar today, doctor del. And if you'll go to her page, you'll notice something special. If you just go to the featured scholar page and you click on her picture, it'll bring up a little bit more information about who she is, and a way to contact her, as well as something about her research. And the amazing part is, if you want to read more about some of the papers that she's published on this work, using IUPUI Scholar works, this will allow you to access information that's been published in journals, freely and easily accessible to you. So we hope that you'll find this with all of our scholars as a way to better understand what they're talking about, and then to ask questions and have them help engage with what you're interested in doing. So upcoming events. This is our chance to invite you. In February, we have a keynote address. So we've invited our featured presenter from another university to speak to us. So go to our website and look up events, and there's two presentations by our keynote address, and first is for the community, and it's on February 24 at 2:00 P.M. And then aimed at our campus and faculty and students will be on Thursday the 25th. At 9:00 A.M. You're welcome to come to one or both, and we hope that you'll join us. And then our featured scholar of the month is going to happen every month. So next month, please join us on February 26, at 12 noon again, where you'll be able to hear have a conversation with doctor Kazembe. For today's meeting. We all have been working hard to understand Zoom, but just a couple of reminders. So everybody so far has their microphones on mute. We're glad you're doing that. You're welcome to put your camera on, especially as we get to the conversation part of this. To help us facilitate the questions and discussion, we invite you as Stephanie sharing some initial information that you put down your questions or comments in the chat box. Nuri and I will monitor that and begin to open up some conversation. We'll help facilitate doctor del to know what you guys have been talking about during her presentation and share some questions with her. There is going to be a recording of this that we'll make available. So folks that couldn't come, would be able to hear it. So if you're uncomfortable being seen on video or being heard, then now you know it's going to be recorded. And very importantly, we are asking you to complete a short survey after this. You'll get it in the chat box, but also we'll send out a quick e mail and ask you to just a short qualtric survey to help us plan for the future and to get your reaction to today's information. So without further ado, I want to welcome doctor Professor Stephanie Andel, who is Pest Professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at the IUPUI School of Science. And we have a very timely topic today. She's going to talk to us about the impact of work and everything that's going on our lives on our health, safety and well being. So we're going to turn it over to Stephanie and let her tell us more about what she wants to talk about. So, Stephanie, It's all yours. All right. Thank you so much. And while I get my slides together, I just want to thank everyone for being here, and of course, thanks to the center for trip for hosting this event and for all that you do to support translational research. So let me see if I can figure out Zoom here. Okay. Can everyone see my screen? All right. Stop one unlocked. Okay. So today, I'm going to be talking about identifying solutions for managing work stress during the COVID era and beyond. And so here's a brief agenda for our time together. So first, I'll just talk a little bit about who I am and then discuss what I mean by the term stress. Then I'll move into a couple of studies that I've recently conducted related to work stress during COVID 19. I'll talk about some individual and organizational level recommendations and solutions for managing work stress during this time. And then lastly wrap up with some unanswered questions and future directions. Okay. So who am I? So I study employee behavior at work, making me an industrial and organizational psychologist. And the overarching goal of my research program is to understand how does work influence employee health, safety, and well being. And further, I aim to understand what can be done about it, right? What are the personal strategies that employees can use to effectively cope with work stress and promote their own recovery. So in other words, I study work stress. Now, when I mentioned work stress, what exactly do I mean by the term stress? Well, when researching this topic, we don't actually directly measure stress per se. That's a common misperception. Rather, we typically study stress as a process. And specifically, stress is a process by which stressors lead to strain. So stressors are simply situations in our environment that require some kind of adaptation. And strain is just simply our negative response to a stressor. So what do I mean by that? Let's just go through a quick and simple example. So say it's the end of the workday, and your boss sends you an urgent e mail request, right? This e mail would be considered an objective stressor, simply just because it's a situation that requires some kind of response. Now, just because you encounter this situation, doesn't mean it's automatically going to lead to negative effects, right? It really depends on how you evaluate or appraise the situation. So for instance, let's say at the time that your boss sent that e mail, you were a superbard at work, and we're looking for something to do. In that case, you'll appraise it as a positive stressor, you won't be bothered by it, right? On the other hand, maybe when your boss sent the e mail, you're feeling overworked, exhausted, and tired. Okay? In that case, you're likely to evaluate the stressor as harmful, right? And threatening. And at that point, you might decide, you'll have to decide if you can effectively cope with the stress or or not, and if not, then you'll experience some kind of strain response, right? And this strain response might be psychological, might experience anxiety, for instance. It could be physical, maybe you'll experience some back pain or neck pain, or maybe it'll be behavioral. Maybe you'll respond to aggression or you'll have a glass of wine in response to the situation. However, the stress process can be disrupted with effective coping strategies. These coping strategies could be problem focused. So for instance, maybe I decide to put together to do list, so I feel like the stressor is more easier to manage. I'm directly trying to address the stressor at hand, or maybe I'll engage in some emotion focused coping mechanisms, which means that I'm just trying to handle my own emotions, my emotional response to the stressor. Maybe I will take a moment and play candy crush. Maybe I'll practice some mindfulness for a few minutes or go on or run just to kind of decompress in terms of in my response stressor. Okay. So however, context also matters. So for instance, whether or not you appraise a work stressor is harmful is going to depend on things like your personality or how long you've been in your job, right? And additionally, organizational factors, such as how much support your organization provides or whether or not your organization provides flexible policies, things like that are going to influence the degree to which work specific stressors are going to influence strain and lead to negative effects on your health and well being. So context matters, right? However, today, we have another major contextual factor, and that is COVID 19, right? So COVID 19 not only is determining the types of work stressors that we're encountering, it also I also influences the impact that these stressors have on our health and well being, as well as our ability to effectively cope with work work stressors during this time. Okay? So as I'm confident, you're all well aware, the ronavirus pandemic continues to affect the entire world. And, of course, the United States has been especially hard hit on over a quarter of all recorded cases, and over 20% of all recorded deaths have occurred in our country. In addition to the physical toll that this virus has been having on individuals across the world. It's also greatly impacting individual psychological health and well being. For instance, on this slide here, you can see data from McKenzie taken during the early months of the pandemic demonstrating the impact of COVID 19 on employee mental health in particular. So for instance, eight and ten individuals reported experiencing symptoms of moderate to severe distress. This is largely because the virus has brought on many abrupt changes to the work experiences. For instance, many folks are working from home, leading a struggles balancing work and family responsibilities, caring for young ones, may maybe even home schooling them, caring for sick family members, et cetera. Additionally, working from home can make it really difficult to detach and get away from work. We're literally living where we work, and this can be especially problematic when sometimes it feels like productivity expectations don't always change despite the pandemic occurring. And last and not least, I'll mention, we probably all feel like Bill Murray and Bron Hog Day, right? Constantly when you're working from home, you're living at home? We're not seeing other people. We're kind of experiencing the same day over and over again. And that in and of itself can be stressful. And in addition, themes of loneliness are constantly evident in the news, and this loneliness has often been attributed to work. And this got my collaborators and my thinking. Okay. How does work influence feelings of loneliness during the pandemic? Right? So we were fortunate to receive some rapid response funding from the IU office of the Vice President of Research to study this issue. And specifically, we conducted an eight week study to one understand the work factors that are driving feelings of work related loneliness. When I say work related loneliness, I mean the degree to which one feels isolated from their organization. And we also looked at the impact of this work loneliness on employee health and behavior. Specifically, we argued that work loneliness is likely to be heightened among workers during the pandemic, and this is due potentially to a number of growing COVID related work stressors. So first, COVID is greatly changing where people work, such that many of us now are working remotely. This of course, decreases our opportunities to interact with colleagues. And also, we depend more on mediated forms of communication, which can increase the potential for misinterpretations, negative emotions, thereby leading to maybe potentially more loneliness. Second, COVID has greatly changed whether people are working, right? A record number of people have been for loaded or unemployed during the course of this pandemic. And accordingly, feelings of job insecurity among employees as high, and this could cause them to feel that their affiliation with their organization is under threat. And third, we thought COVID has greatly also influenced how people work, right? So virtually all organizations have had to adapt quickly to the pandemic. But not all of these organizations have adequately communicated these changes and adaptations to their employees. So we suggest or we posit that this lack of information regarding how decisions are being made around the pandemic could be interpreted by employees as a sign that their organization doesn't really care about them, and thereby leading them to experience a sense of work related loneliness. So we examined the degree to which these factors led to these feelings of work loneliness among a sample of 265 full time US employees. And again, this is an eight week study. Began on March 20, which was actually about the time when the WHO declared COVID 19 as a pandemic. Every week during this study, participants completed a survey about work experiences, their health, as well as their well. In terms of sample characteristics, you can see that we had a pretty heterogeneous sample in terms of industries. And let's see. I want to point out that 19.25%, almost 20% of our sample became unemployed or were for load during the study. So these individuals only completed surveys on the weeks that they were currently employed with their organizations. But I thought that statistic was quite noteworthy. All right. So in terms of our results, results demonstrated that each of these three factors was significantly associated with work loneliness that same week. So on weeks that they experienced these different factors, they also experienced greater levels of work loneliness. And further, these feelings of loneliness in turn were associated with more depressive symptoms. As well as fewer extra role behaviors. And when I say extra role behaviors, I mean behaviors that go above and beyond the job description, right? And organizations are probably really hoping that employees are going above and beyond as we're continuing to go through all these different changes and adaptations. So we kind of found that work loneliness led to both of these outcomes. However, we also found that employees who were more self compassionate. Those that treat themselves or tend to treat themselves more with kindness, compassion and understanding during these times of suffering did not experience as much depression following these experiences of work loneliness. And interestingly, we also found that employees who are more self compassionate, actually engage in even fewer actual behaviors in comparison to those lower in self compassion. And we suspect that this is because self compassionate individuals are going to be more likely to respond to feelings of loneliness by giving themselves some grace and some space to manage their emotions instead of taking on tasks and just continuing to burn themselves out more, right? So it seems that self compassion can help individuals to k maintain some of their resources, and it does seem to protect them from some of these negative health outcomes associated with work loneliness. Now, of course, it's important to note that things like self compassion are not a substitute for proper supports on the part of the employers, which I'll get into later. But we do think these findings were interesting This slide just kind of summarizes those results. Work is contributing to feelings of loneliness during the pandemic. Work loneliness negatively impacts employee health and work behavior, and self compassion can help. This study was actually just recently accepted for publication at Journal of occupational health psychology. So if you're interested in learning more, please check out the publication. Although this study got it some interesting drivers of work loneliness, we also wanted to study just how the pandemic was influencing the health and well being of those working on the front line. Of course, this issue has been very prominent in the news this year, as you can see by many of these headlines. And so this led my collaborators and to ask, how is the pandemic influencing the work experiences, health, and well being of frontline workers? Okay. So we're lucky to receive funding from IU office of the Vice President of research to conduct this study. This is a longitudinal two month study, and it took place from May 1 to July 12. So specifically, we surveyed 120 registered nurses who were working full time on the front lines of hospitals and direct patient care. So 32 states are represented in this study. And in each survey, the nurses, each survey in this study. Nurses completed questions about work related stressors they've encountered. We also asked them to describe the biggest challenges they've dealt with, as well as what their hospitals were and were not doing to support them during this challenging time. And on analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data from these surveys, we detected a few key challenges or concerns that consistently showed up. Specifically, nurses reported issues related to understaffing, insufficient communication, inadequate safety protocols, and extensive emotional demands. So I'll just touch on these quickly to see what the data said. So across both quantitative and qualitative data, nurses were consistently reporting that their units were understaffed. So for instance, over half of the nurses, 60%, stated that their work unit simply needed more employees to adequately fulfill their work tasks, right? And we refer to this as manpower understaffing. They simply did not have enough manpower to complete all of the tasks. Additionally, 38% agreed or strongly agreed that there working needed employees with different skills from those that the group currently possesses. This is a little different because we consider this to be expertise understaffing. So it might not necessarily been that they don't have enough physical bodies to do the work, but they don't have the expertise to represent it to adequately fulfill the tasks that they need to. And we were quite surprised or we can see this in the qualitative data as well. We were quite surprised to learn that many nursing staff actually had their hours reduced and in some cases, were even laid off, which is largely due to the freezing of elective surgeries which influenced hospital finances. So this put ICU nurses in difficult positions, as you can see in some of these quotes here. For instance, one person noting that they were now assigned a three to one ratio in their patient nurse ratio, instead of a usual one to one or two to one because of budget hours. Another theme was insufficient communication. And this theme arose in a couple of different ways. So specifically, the vast majority of nurses reported a lack of a lack of consistent and effective communication from upper management. That is what we would call insufficient downward communication. And further, nurses reported a lack of support for upward communication. So that is when employees tried to speak up about concerns or make suggestions for improvement, they really felt like they were consistently shut down or ignored by management. And so therefore, it's perhaps unsurprising that only 32% said they were confident to a large or a very large extent in their hospital's handling of the pandemic. And these communication concerns are also evident in some quotes in the qualitative data. For instance, one individual noted that when somebody in their hospital contracted COVID 19, they did not receive any word from their employer. They read it in the newspaper. Another individual noted in terms of this upward communication that when staff tried to talk to superiors about COVID, they essentially tell us to deal with it and we basically signed up for this when we became nurses. A. So Another theme were reports of inadequate safety protocols and resources. So you can see here, we asked individuals. We asked participants about a number of different protocols and resources. It may be interesting to note that individuals were less concerned about the availability of resources that were patient focused. So things like ICU beds and ventilator, you can see on the right side of this slide. However, you can see that employees are most concerned about the availability of resources to protect their own health, things like clear safety protocols, COVID tests for staff, and of course, PPE, which we have consistently heard about in the news, right? And this lack of attention on employee safety is evident in some of these quotes as well. One participant noting that their hospital system had made it so that pregnant staff must care for COVID patients. Another individual reporting that lack of PPE is scary. And the last thing I'll mention was extensive emotional demands. So for instance, almost three quarters of our sample are reported that their work was often or always emotionally demanding over the last two weeks of the beginning of the study. And of course, it's important to mention that these emotional demands don't just stop at work. Nurses report that the impact of these demands are also spilling over to impact their families as well. One participant noting, it's exhausting. They're constantly worrying that they'll get someone else or their family members sick. And I'll note that when we started the study, each of these key concerns, so all these concerns on the left side of the screen are those that I just went through. Each of these concerns were a significantly associated with each of these outcomes in the beginning of the study. And then we can see that even six weeks later, many of these relationships hold. So many of these factors were influencing employee health and well being throughout the duration of our study. Interestingly, I'll note that the relationships with understaffing are actually quite I find them quite interesting. So manpower understaffing was not associated with these outcomes over time, but expertise understaffing was. So it seems like at least at this stage in the pandemic, for this specific sample, it was the fact that they didn't feel like they had enough expertise in terms of how to adequately respond to the COVID pandemic that was associated with more of these negative outcomes. Okay. So we've talked about the problem. Now let's talk about the solutions, right? So as we saw in the studies that we've talked about so far, COVID 19 is creating unique work related challenges. But what can be done to address these challenges? So I'll now discuss some insights from my own studies alongside those from other recently published work. First, some organizational level solutions. So what can organizations do to support employees during this time? Well, first, prioritize safety employee safety, right? So research shows that by strictly enacting and enforcing CDC recommended safety guidelines in the workplace. Not only does that protect employees physical health, and that also protects employees psychological health associated, of course with less anxiety. And relatedly, leaders commitment to safety, so not just saying safety is important, but also showing it and engaging in safety behaviors themselves is critical as well. Providing the necessary resources is important, right? So for instance, for healthcare and other essential workers, we need to do more than just valorizing their work, right? So this was shown in the nursing study. Participants had in the nursing study I just reviewed. Participants noted that they were less stressed when their employers sought their feedback, when they provided consistent communication and sufficient PPE. And when they felt that their psychological psychological health was supported by getting enough breaks and when their employers tried to limit emotional demands as much as possible. So, for instance, one participant mentioned that their unit was allowed to take a break from the COVID unit and swap a shift from regular medical units. So just finding ways to support psychological health as employees is important. For those working remotely, providing consistent and clear communication regarding how the organization is responding to COVID 19 is, of course, important, as well as providing sufficient tele work task support. So this is a underked factor that's critically important and has been associated with employee engagement during this time. And the last organizational support that I'll note is providing family supportive policies and leadership. So organizations really need to provide employees with some kind of flexibility so that employees that will allow employees to better manage their work and family demands. So there was a recent study that was recently published that examined different types of work family management strategies and their relationships to health and well being. And so this study found that I for dual couples, if both individuals are working out of the home, then alternating days strategy is the best where one person is working one day and the other person its home, and then they can switch. But obviously, this requires organizations to provide that scheduling flexibility autonomy. They also found that for those who are working at home, remote need based alternating was best, meaning that it was best when the couples had the flexibility to respond to situations as they needed. And again, that requires flexibility on the part of the employer. Okay. So what about individual level solutions? What can employees themselves do to cope and manage with work stressors during this pandemic? Okay. Well, first, research shows that taking designated breaks including yes your lunch breaks, but also even short micro breaks of just a few minutes can help us to regain energy and refocus during the day, right? So this is particularly helpful for those who are working from home. My own research shows that just some cyber loafing. Using the Internet for non work purposes for just a few minutes can help employees to kind of recover from stressful work experiences. And research shows that even just a few minutes can make a difference. Literally a couple minutes. I mean, longer breaks can be better and more rejuvenating, but even just breaks of a couple of minutes can be beneficial. Additionally, set boundaries, right? Working from home can produce feelings of rural confusion, like everything's melding together between your work and your non work life. So by setting both tempor time based boundaries, so designating a start time and end time and sticking to those boundaries can be quite helpful, as well as if possible, creating a designated workspace at home. And this is the case for meetings, too, right? So set boundaries when it comes to meeting format. Recent research suggests that we should use telephone or audio only calls when we're feeling emotionally drained. And just to reserve video for times when you need to convey emotion or important messages. In another study that my collaborators and I recently conducted, and just sent out for publication. We found that COVID related news consumption is also associated with greater anxiety as well as lower work engagement. So therefore, another recommendation for those who are feel like they're struggling right now is to limit the daily time engaging with COVID related news, and the WHO actually recommends no more than two designated times per day if possible. And finally, as I mentioned earlier, research has consistently showing that self compassion is associated with significant positive effects for health and well being. So indeed, my own study that I presented earlier demonstrates the effectiveness of self compassion as well. And importantly, self compassion is consistently shown to be a skill that can be effectively trained and practiced. And there's many resources that are available for learning self compassion, including the website that I listed on this slide here has a number of great resources for anybody who's interested. However, I just want to reiterate one more time that these individual coping strategies are not substitutes for responsible actions on the part of organizations to support their employees, right? Organizational interventions are key. But for individuals who are looking for strategies to cope, self compassion might be a great resource or tool. So we've gone through quite a bit of research related to the employee experience during COVID 19. But what are some unanswered questions that future studies still need to address? Well, first, how does COVID 19 impact the working experiences of non health care essential workers? These individuals are the most vulnerable when it comes to job loss, when it comes to COVID 19 exposure, and they're often low wage jobs, and indeed, research by Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that one in four essential workers have trouble affording basic household expenses during the coronavirus pandemic. So they are having many important work experiences that need to be represented in the data so we can really understand the best resources and support that we can provide for those individuals. Second, what can organizations do to support the transition back to work for those with long term COVID symptoms? Right? Whether you like it or not, unfortunately, I think COVID is going to be impacting our lives for quite a while or impacting our society for quite a while. So really organizations need to understand how they can best support employees who continue to be affected by the virus? And the third thing I'll mention is, how can organizations reasonably assess employee performance during the pandemic? Right? And this is especially important given that COVID 19 is disproportionately affecting the working experiences and productivity of some more than others. So for instance, in that study work in family strategies that I talked about earlier, they found that women are taking on still quite a bit of the family demands while also trying to often work from home. So these are things that need to be taken into account when organizations are deciding how to reasonably assess employee performance during this pandemic? Last but not least, I'm just going to mention a couple of ongoing and future studies that I'll be working on in the near future. First, in addition to the nursing study that I presented today, my collaborators and I also conducted a study that tracks the experiences of Florida nurses over a longer period of time. This was over the course of 16 weeks. And this study will allow us to understand the implications of COVID 19 on employee experiences and health both before during and after a major surge in cases. So this took place over the time when Florida had its first surge. We're also merging in county level cases over time to assess how these different factors vary depending upon COVID related workload for these nurses. And we're also conducting a follow up survey to understand the long term psychological effects of working on the front lines of the pandemic. Additionally, I hope to continue to leverage the power of self compassion by developing and testing interventions targeted for specific groups. For instance, building upon the results in the study I discussed today, my collaborators and I hope to develop a self compassion intervention for remote workers. Additionally, I recently submitted a grant to collect data for a self compassion intervention to target another group, so early career academics in STEM, who are experiencing negative impacts associated with impostor syndrome. So finally, I just want to acknowledge my collaborators on the two studies that I presented today. And thank you so much. Be happy to take any questions from the audience. Thank you, Stephanie for sharing this amazing information. If you'll unshare your screen, we'll be able to see who else is here with us. There have been a couple of questions that have been posted into the chat box. So I'll share those with you while others are coming up with ideas or things that they maybe want to converse about. And we can certainly open up The screens here for a conversation as well. One question was referring to the nursing information that you had shared. So like noting that nurses typically work varying schedules, maybe 8 hours to even longer, maybe 16 hour days. So would that require then nurses to work fewer days if they're working longer days, but then they're more exhausted? So what employers be able to do to help with that? And a clarifying question with that is whether when you were doing the surveys, if you only talked to nurses working with COVID care, or did you talk to other nurses as well? That's a great question. So in terms of our inclusion criteria for that study, every nurse had to be working primarily in direct patient care in a US hospital. So there were some individual there was some variance in terms of some individuals who were working more with COVID patients versus others. We saw that kind of shift as the time period went on. It seemed like more individuals were of course working more with COVID patients as time went on. Nurses typically work variable schedules. Often the longer days mean the nurse needs to work fewer days, but also means exhausting days. What can employer do to help? That's a great question and a great point. Is really more work needs to be done to understand the optimal shift level or shift length for these folks, and that might be different during this time than during times we're not in a global pandemic, right? At what point do individuals need at least a break and maybe what lengths of time is most optimal for individuals to not only be able to perform their best, but also feel their best, in terms of their psychological health. And we are finding some results that I didn't share. We found that both the interaction of having manpower understaffing and that expertise understaffing is associated with greater cognitive failures and more safety workgrounds, and some near misses. So it's also influencing patient care as well. There's a lot of reasons why we need to ensure that not only we have enough staff, enough expertise, but also that these individuals are feeling their best when they're on the jobs. Yeah, there's another question here that I think is sort of that could be related to what you just discussed around the relationship between COVID news consumption and stress. And so that's a general question, but as you were talking about nurses, I'm aware I've heard some information where health care providers were talking about the impact of the negative news about their work or maybe some of the misinformation and the impact that that might have had during the pandemic, when maybe the reports that people were you know, misidentifying COVID patients to get more money and just the impact of that that misinformation on health care providers. This is a question. But then the general question here is, you think there's a relationship between COVID news and in stress? Is that correlation? Yeah, that's a great question. So we thought a lot about this. W writing when analyzing the data and writing up our results is that, COVID 19 that continues is going to lead to probably feelings of general anxiety, and that anxiety may not necessarily be work related, right? But when we experience anxiety, we use up a lot of our internal resources. We're using up a lot of energy. We're trying to manage our anxiety, we lack focus, and that can, of course, influence our work engagement. Interestingly, we also find that situation or this relationship does not It's not one size fits all. And in fact, we actually find that individuals who are drawn to their jobs for more pro social reasons, they're in their job to help other people. They actually are more negatively they have worse responses to the news, right? Seeing news of constant patients suffering, of people dying, of the pandemic spreading. That can be particularly difficult for individuals who are looking to help other people, but they can't, or they don't feel like it's not as effective. So Yeah. You're getting great comments in the chat. I know it's hard for you to follow that as you're going along, but another question is about the trade off between gathering this kind of data and then delivering interventions for workers as a way to help versus the burden of doing this, of collecting the data and requiring some sort of workshop, that's an additional burden. So what are your thoughts about how best corporations can balance these factors of getting information versus just doing Yeah. That is a great question. We also dealt with this question as well, especially when we were trying to think about how to best gather data and understand the working experiences of individuals working on the front lines, and of course, these surges kept coming in, like, how will they even respond? We dealt with that for our own studies by Our nurses completed a survey every two weeks, instead of ideally, we would have gotten data weekly or the best daily to really capture these full experiences. So we did adjust our study design with kind of this idea of burden in mind, we wanted to make sure these individuals had enough time to focus on their jobs. In terms of interventions, I mean, that is a great point people don't have time to just sit in a room and a training to learn new skills to do their jobs better necessarily. So I would say for that, a lot of the results that are coming in a lot of the concerns of employees themselves that we are identifying are really just problems that we normally experience in the workplace, but it's just intensified. There are some really great solutions that are in place from previous research, pre pandemic in terms of just providing, for instance, opportunities for employees to be able to speak up, right? Maybe trying to adjust employee shift schedules so that people can take breaks when needed, right? I think I think it's more realistic to make these small changes that have been supported in the research, but just implementing those instead of it probably won't be quite realistic to bring it a whole new big intervention at this time. So when I think about my academic side, I'm so grateful that A, you were able to quickly mobilize and do a survey, you know, get some study, get some data, and that people were willing to do it because as you know someone who's experiencing COVID and work, there's lots of questions I have in my mind, and it's only now for me personally, that I feel like now that maybe on another side, and we have vaccinations in a plan that I can begin to think about what has just happened to me. And what will it look like on the other side? You know, this is awesome to have some models and some ideas and some information that can help us. I think about the opportunities, folks in our academic and our local community to build more opportunities to find out what we could do to learn from what's happened and where we go. There's a couple of other questions getting back to the nursing and wondering if you if you were able to see any difference between male and female nurses, how they responded. That's a great question. We didn't have a whole lot of variance in well, there was still some variance, but I think it was about 80% female male in our nursing sample. But we did look to see if there are gender differences. We didn't find any, but that could be due to the imbalance in the gender of our sample. And I can see so to accommodate the understaffing needs, why didn't medical facilities reallocate nurses that worked in other departments to help with COVID patients? Does that cost more than hiring outside help? That's a wonderful question. And actually, Hospitals are doing this actually quite regularly. The problem is that this leads to opportunities for more expertise understaffing. Actually, this is one of the We would expect that one of the key sources of this expertise understaffing. Indeed, in our qualitative data, there were many individuals noting this that they were bringing in nurses from other units who just simply didn't have the expertise to be they're not hadn't focused on that or hadn't been trained in the ICU to begin with. So that created another unique array of stressors and negative effects. But that's a great question. Nurses. So I'm not sure what you mean by agency nurses. So in our sample, it was only hospital. There were only hospital nurses. So we weren't able to look at differences there. Well, it may be in the person who submitted that is welcome to that was Charles. You're welcome to unmute and maybe clarified, but there may be many ways that nurses are employed. And so is that there be opportunities perhaps around addressing both the issues that you're talking about, with the expertise or the shortage of staff. Interesting question. Absolutely. There's a clarification. We were employed by agencies that provide staffing to several places. So yes. I see. Okay. Yeah. I do know I don't know if this is related, but there were a few participants that did report that they were travel nurses. So we accounted for some of those things in our data to see if, if there were differences for those who are familiar with the hospital versus who haven't been at that hospital for very long. We just did not have many individuals who were in that situation. So we didn't we didn't talk to any differences, but that's a very interesting question for future research. So Stephanie, I can share, just as a from my perspective, I'm not a frontline health care worker in the sense of like nurses or physicians, but I'm a mental health provider. And so I found even though I wasn't going into work, that a lot of my zoom time and it had to be on Zoom was helping people calm down and understand where they are, which was highly draining, in a similar way, as you were talking about earlier about the impact of the stress, it was exhausting and that I had to find ways personally to keep myself do self care. What would that look like. But then to just understand, like, my gosh, the impact that this was having on people trying to navigate it. And now I'm wondering in the after times what work is going to look like because I feel like I'm still behind all the time, but yet I'm working a lot. And so how much of the stuff we're doing now is still just because of COVID and the impact on what we do. And when that's better, how our work will look. You need to do a survey on that to help me understand what's next. You don't mind. Yeah, that's a great question. And actually, that reminds you of some research I was just reviewing that showed The number of meetings that we all have during the pandemic has skyrocketed because it's just easier to schedule a meeting with a little Zoom link, and everybody can attend. So that re takes up a lot of time and there's also because we're depending on e mail more, it takes more time just to respond to everybody's e mails, right? Because you can't just drop by somebody's office and ask a quick question. It has to be more of these mediated forms of communication. It's definitely impacting our productivity, and of course, the way we work. Now, it's an open question and really interested to see how it influences our working experiences post pandemic. I think that there's going to be some benefits, right? So being able to provide more flexible options, organizations will be more accustomed to allowing employees to work from home, to utilize Zoom. So there could be some benefits there, but I mean, in terms of how else it's going to change the work. Environment. It's going to be really interesting. Maybe we're all just going to continue working remotely. I hope not. Well, one thing I've wondered about and there's another question here that touches on this issue is I think part of what's made it work for many of us is that we already had established relationships. So we're just moving from one platform to another. But how do you how do you do that online? It would require if we just all work from home and we don't have that individual interaction that we need or that we've been doing just like, now we're meeting on Zoom, that could be an interesting And then what's going to be the impact to many people are starved for that person to person contact? Is that going to go from we went from nothing to like extreme for a while, or what will be the impact of when we go back? And see people. Maybe we'll be really unproductive because we'll just be talking and catching up. I don't know. Right. That's what I was actually just reading, right? The 1918 pandemic was the roaring 20s after. Everybody was excited to see everyone, so I'm curious to see what happens, yeah. Yeah. So there's another question here about what other factors beyond self compassion do you think might boost resilience to the negative effects of pandemic and loneliness? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think really monitoring kind of how you're feeling at the time and trying to kind of protect yourselves from the different triggers as much as possible. Of course, reducing news consumption, like I mentioned, but I would say, take that seriously, not just the computer news or I mean, the TV news. But in addition, monitoring how much you're on Twitter and all these things and just where you see all this news occur, it can create a lot of problems. Also if possible, I mean, of course, it's difficult when it's winter. But Being outside as much as possible has also been associated with, of course, positive effects for psychological health, and it's also related to more recovery, so you're able to be more engaged with your work. It can create some balance in our lives. But it's a great question. We need more information and know how to become more resilient. Well, I am going to share that my wife yesterday morning said, you know, I slept a whole lot better last night because I didn't doom scroll before I went to bed doom scrolling. And so I'm going to tell her I'm going to encourage her to lay off of the doom scrolling based on what you just said that maybe there's some actual benefit to reducing our exposure to all this stuff. Even though I mean, we all know that, but yet it's so simple to just like, but then you might get really impacted by that more than you might realize. Absolutely. Another thing I would mention is just, I mean, calling a front. So in terms of I think we all try to do Zoom happy hours, and I know for a while, I had a lot of Zoom game nights, and that's, I think, very, very valuable. But also, you know, when you're balancing all your Zoom meetings. I think it's really important to think of ways to socialize with others that maybe are not draining, right? So maybe away from Zoom, but just trying to get creative to find opportunities to interact because this loneliness that's associated with the pandemic, work related or not is really quite detrimental to psychological health. So doing anything possible to kind to maintain these social connections is going to be critical as well. Good. Well, I'm just again, delighted that you have some data and some perspective and you're saying things that make sense and that give us all a chance to really be mindful about how we're experiencing this and how our colleagues, our friends, our family members are exper this. And then maybe some concrete things that we could do to make a difference later on in the future. I think that's really important and helpful. I do want to acknowledge that we have somebody on the screen. You've been noticing we have an interpreter trying out their new skills, and that's awesome. It's been fun watching. You're doing a wonderful job. Thank you. And we're glad that we have that available for anybody that would need that service today and that you have a chance to practice. I hope we weren't speaking too fast because it's really hard when some of us go lickety split, trying to make the best of our hour here, and then the poor interpreter has to figure out what we're trying to say. So, Stephanie, do you have anything else you want to share before we wrap up and try to be mindful that, we say we should not go the full hour on these things so people have a chance to have breaks. So anything you want to say at the end before I would wrap up with a couple of final announcements? I would just say, thank you all so much for being here for supporting my work and for your interest. And yeah, thank you so much. So I would encourage all of us that have questions or additional ideas. You have Stephanie's contact information. Maybe you have some things you'd like to share, or certainly, if you just want to learn more about her work, you're welcome to read things that she's participated in, and she's got more articles coming out, so you could always go back to her page and to see the scholar work, so it's easily accessible to you. And I know we all encourage people to delve into those articles and to ask questions and become part of new and exciting research projects that connect us as I UPI with the community and involve our students in order to to identify to generate knowledge that we could use to solve problems in our community. As a reminder, you are going to get again in the chat a quick link to go to a survey. So please be sure to do that. If not, we'll send you an e mail follow up. Then probably about Monday, we'll send another e mail to all of you that has a copy of the slides from today as well as a link to the recorded version of this in case you want to see it again or you want to share it with anybody else. Reminder, one more reminder of our upcoming events. Please go to the trip UPI dot EDU slash events. We have Dean Bernadette Melnick coming in February, our keynote address. We do that once a year. She's going to talk about how do we improve health outcomes? Health outcomes with what we know about research. Both a community address and then a campus address. That's on February 24 and 25th. And then we're going to do these monthly, chats, conversations with some of our amazing translational scholars. So watch the events page for that next month at the end of the month is doctor Kazemi. So thank you all so much for joining us today, and we'll look forward to these continued conversations where we can learn from each other and share more information. Thank you, Stephanie, again, for your great work and for helping us launch this exciting opportunity in the Center for transiting research and practice here at IEPI. So everybody, have a great day. Thank you. Thank you.