The Nebraska Collaborative Investment in Nurses, a HRSA collaboration between UNMC and state healthcare organizations, have concentrated on wellness training and resources to prevent burnout and mental healthcare conditions in nursing students, nurses and healthcare professionals.
The HRSA team consists of the UNMC College of Nursing, the UNMC College of Public Health, the Center of Nursing, the Board of Nursing and Hospital Association.
The funding of the program from 2022-2025 has celebrated the following impacts:
- 1500-plus incoming BSN students were offered Wellness How One Lives Effectively (WHOLE), with a 55 percent participation rate across all five UNMC College of Nursing divisions.
- 500-plus students and 30-plus faculty and staff received Mental Health First Aid certification.
- 450-plus health professionals have attended the “Heal the Healer” webinar/summit series and received no-cost, continuing education credit.
- 100-plus health professionals across the state completed the 10-week Psychological First Aid and WHOLE programs.
- The team reached 2500-plus participants with wellness programming.
- Data were collected via REDcap and utilized to inform rapid cycle quality improvement.
- Findings were disseminated locally, regionally, and nationally.
- The team collaborated with the Nebraska Board of Nursing to target systems solutions, becoming the first nursing recipient of the WellBeing First Champion Badge, recognizing that Nebraska’s nursing licensing applications are now free from overly broad and invasive mental health questions — a systems barrier to seeking behavioral health support.
Additional highlights included:
- Implemented Nursing 360 (Pharos 360), a student management platform for student support in real-time, providing key process improvement and data management/analysis to improve student success.
- Supported TalkCampus, a peer support wellness app, utilized across the UNMC system.
- Provided creative writing opportunities to support mental wellness.
- Developed belongingness virtual reality scenarios dealing with potentially complex topics to assist students in confronting and discussing these issues before entering a professional clinical role.
- Created two Critical Incident Stress Debriefing e-modules for use with student nurses and faculty to learn debriefing and coping after potentially traumatic clinical events.