ECHO Stories - ECHO Colorado

Jun 15, 2021

ECHO Colorado Learning Series Helps Frontline Health Care Workers Deal With Stress

Past the Pandemic: Mental Well-being for You and Your Patients To Be Offered For the Fifth Time Since Start of Pandemic Past the Pandemic: Mental Well-being

View Details ►

Past the Pandemic: Mental Well-being for You and Your Patients To Be Offered For the Fifth Time Since Start of Pandemic

Past the Pandemic: Mental Well-being for You and Your Patients (PTP) is a free, six-week ECHO Colorado learning series designed to teach health care providers and other staff working in health care settings strategies to navigate, normalize and hold space for worries and experiences during this pandemic. Held on Tuesdays from 12:00 to 1:00 PM MT and running June 29 – August 3, each session provides helpful, tangible tools in a psychoeducational, didactic format. By understanding stress along a continuum, participants learn how to manage stress and loss, increase capacity to prevent burnout, elevate connectedness and mindfulness, and promote quality patient care.

PTP started in July 2020 and 341 health care workers have attended the first four series. It was developed in partnership with University of Colorado Department of Psychiatry as one of many offerings and resources the department offered to address the mental health of health care workers during the pandemic.

“We developed the Past the Pandemic ECHO series in response to the COVID-19 crisis as a way of integrating more support for health care workers during a difficult time,” said Mandy Doria, MS, LPC, NCC, RYT-200, Student/Resident Mental Health Triage Counselor and Wellness & Outreach Coordinator, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “We felt that offering time for connection, psychoeducation, and skills-based learning would be most effective to address the potential burnout, stress, and trauma experienced by those on the front lines as well as those working in health care settings.”

Participants found the series to be incredibly valuable, best summed up by this quote from one participant: “This series helped me recognize that we aren’t alone in this challenge and it provided useful resources to recognize when we are needing help or to make small changes to get through the challenges.”

Hide Details ►

Jun 14, 2021

ECHO Colorado Offers COVID-19 Learning Series to Help Support Nursing Home Staff

ECHO Colorado (Extension for Community Health Outcomes), in partnership with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is currently offering the National Nursing Home COVID

View Details ►

ECHO Colorado (Extension for Community Health Outcomes), in partnership with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is currently offering the National Nursing Home COVID Action Network (CAN), an ECHO learning series designed to advance improvements in COVID-19 preparedness, safety and infection control in nursing homes. Ongoing weekly learning sessions are held virtually on Thursdays from 7:00 to 8:00 AM, ending August 26. Designed for clinical and administrative leadership at nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities and other post-acute and long-term care communities, the series offers access to experts in infection control, patient safety, quality improvement and nursing home operations.

“The National Nursing Home CAN series creates a space for dialogue around COVID-19 and discussion of emerging information about vaccines and the virus,” said Leah Willis, Program Director at ECHO Colorado. “The ECHO model offers a rich way to learn in the environment created by the pandemic.”

“This series is providing an opportunity to share best practices, share struggles and work together as colleagues who share the mission of serving older adults in nursing homes well,” said Cari Levy, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Health Care Policy and Research at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; and Section Chief of Palliative Medicine and Director of the Denver Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Research at the Rocky Mountain VA Medical Center. Levy is a national palliative care and geriatrics expert who is serving as the project lead.

“The ECHO series is helpful in that it offers advice from professionals who help sort out information on COVID,” said Karen Buck, DON at Valley View Healthcare Center in Canon City, Colo. “The series also provides a safe place for facility workers to share ideas, vent when needed and it creates a feeling of knowing that each week you had a place to go that truly cared about you, your facility and stopping the spread of COVID.”

ECHO Colorado leverages web-based technology to disseminate curated medical knowledge to frontline providers through regularly scheduled ECHO sessions at which specialists and primary care clinicians meet in a collaborative focused on particular clinical or public health-related topics. The mission is to leverage the knowledge and experience of geographically-diverse communities for workforce development and improved health for all.

Hide Details ►

May 26, 2021

Primary Care Voice: Advocacy & Leveraging Narrative

The voices of providers are urgently needed to help address the existing challenges of our current healthcare system. COVID-19 has only served to highlight many of

View Details ►

The voices of providers are urgently needed to help address the existing challenges of our current healthcare system. COVID-19 has only served to highlight many of these inequities. Primary Care Voice: Advocacy & Leveraging Narrative aimed to empower providers with the tools and knowledge to share their narrative voices and articulate issues to the public and policy makers. This approach, using the Public Narrative model, showed participants how to demonstrate their shared values and emotions to promote change. Participants in this series learned how to better share their stories and experiences through collaboration with experts in public narrative in order to promote positive change in their clinics and the broader community.

Participants learned how to utilize Public Narrative by providing facilitation and coaching of both large and small groups. Participants learned and practiced the components of Public Narrative including the structure of a story, challenge-choice-outcome, Story of Self, Story of Us and Story of Now. Participants received coaching, real-world examples and feedback that was vital in helping them develop and practice their own Stories of Self, Us and Now. This empowered many of them to find their own voice and narrative, telling meaningful stories which will impact their personal and professional lives. In addition to teaching Public Narrative, facilitators provided a space for participants to reflect on the storytelling process and to identify avenues for advocacy.

This series helped 20 primary care providers from diverse backgrounds and professional careers improve their storytelling skills. The participants included 12 physicians and advanced practice providers, three healthcare administrators, two behavioral health providers, two nurses and one dental hygienist.

Participants found the series to be incredibly valuable, best summed up by this quote from one participant:
“This series was so energizing and life-giving. It made me think deeply but also felt like a break from the run-around of the rest of my week, and I learned so much. Thank you for putting it together!”

Participants also plan to utilize the skills they developed, with one participant stating that they planned to use their stories to:
“encourage a systemic mindset of clinicians working in nontraditional roles and to empower change beyond individual patients and clinic operations.”

Hide Details ►

Mar 31, 2021

ECHO Colorado’s COVID-19 Series for Primary Care Providers Reaches 100th Session and One Year Anniversary

COVID-19 Just-in-Time ECHO for Primary Care is an ECHO Colorado learning series that was created to provide up-to-the-minute information about the pandemic for the state’s primary

View Details ►

COVID-19 Just-in-Time ECHO for Primary Care is an ECHO Colorado learning series that was created to provide up-to-the-minute information about the pandemic for the state’s primary care providers. On Monday, March 8, 2021 the series was delivered for the 100th time – most ECHO learning series consist of six to eight sessions – to the 100 providers who attend every Monday and Wednesday morning at 7:00 AM.

ECHO Colorado’s COVID-19 series started on March 27, 2020 to address the urgent information needs of providers in the primary care setting and this was made possible through a partnership between the University of Colorado School of Medicine and University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. A research team and a multi-disciplinary task force consisting of eight physicians, two pharmacists, a program director and a medical epidemiologist has driven the development of topics and content for each session. Throughout the series, experts from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and other state and local agencies have provided information on epidemiology, medication management, vaccine development and deployment, testing, primary care health policy, telemedicine, bioethics and more.

“The ability to collaborate remotely with health care professionals from a variety of backgrounds is really important to disseminating the right information and ensuring that Coloradans are getting the best care,” said Governor Jared Polis about COVID-19 Just-in-Time for Primary Care.

In the next phase of ECHO Colorado’s COVID-19 education series the focus will shift to post-COVID care. COVID Care in the Ambulatory Setting, beginning Monday, April 5, will focus on providing primary care physicians with the necessary practice knowledge to care for Coloradans who develop COVID or face post COVID complications. Sessions will continue to provide high level epidemiology updates, vaccination information, medication management development and policy updates with an added focus on the management of COVID patients in the outpatient setting, post discharge care and management of long-term complications.

“ECHO Colorado has spent the last year working intensely to meet the educational and practice needs of providers and health care systems facing the challenges of the COVID pandemic,” said John “Fred” Thomas, Executive Director of ECHO Colorado. “As the pandemic continues to evolve, the needs of the medical community have shifted, and ECHO’s COVID response is advancing to meet these needs.”

COVID Care in the Ambulatory Setting begins Monday, April 5. For information and to register click here.

Hide Details ►