Tess Burley, BS, from the School of Nursing, and Guldamla Kalender, BA, from the Medical School are working with Allina Health to develop and conduct mental health and wellbeing training for employees and assist in the evaluation of the results. Allina Health works to prevent and treat illnesses and enhance the health of individuals, families, and communities across Minnesota. Currently, Burley and Kalender are in the process of getting approval for exemption from the University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) prior to sending out their completed Allina nurse wellbeing survey. The interns hope to publish a paper with their findings in the future.
The interns started their project by becoming familiar with the U.S. surgeon general’s framework for workplace mental health and wellbeing. Based on the framework, the interns divided up their survey questions into the categories of protection from harm, connection and community, work-life harmony, feeling mattered at work, and opportunity for growth. Burley and Kalender learned how to write unilateral questions using unbiased language and implemented a six-point Likert-type scale without a neutral midpoint option to yield the most accurate responses to evaluate. The interns shared that their favorite part of the experience was learning more about survey composition and creating survey questions.
Burley shared, “This project has impacted our future professional work by exposing us to new and unfamiliar disciplines and by serving as a safe environment to make mistakes, learn, and grow.”
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