Healing the Healers — Enhancing Nurse Well-being in Trauma Centers | Framing an Opportunity

Executive Brief | Grady 360 | Vision 2030

Healing the Healers — Enhancing Nurse Well-being in Trauma Centers

A Living Labs 360 Purpose-Driven Exploration

🧭 Why Now

Grady’s Trauma Center represents the heart of care — and the heaviest burden of human suffering.

Our nurses stand at the intersection of urgency, compassion, and resilience. Yet the intensity of trauma care exposes them to chronic emotional strain, moral distress, and burnout.

Recent studies show that:

Nurse well-being directly impacts patient safety, clinical quality, and workforce retention.

Burnout correlates with work system factors — staffing, leadership culture, and emotional support — more than with individual resilience.

Trauma settings amplify these challenges, calling for a systemic response rather than isolated wellness programs.

In short: we can’t heal patients sustainably if the healers themselves are breaking.

💡 The Opportunity

Position Grady’s Trauma Center as a Living Lab for Well-being — an innovation ecosystem that brings together nurses, leaders, and behavioral scientists to co-design and test real-world solutions that improve caregiver well-being and clinical performance.

 Vision:

“A trauma center where healing includes the healers — and where systemic well-being drives clinical excellence.”

This opportunity aligns directly with Grady 360 | Vision 2030 — where the health of our people, systems, and community are interdependent dimensions of sustainable transformation.

🔬 What Living Labs 360 (LL360) Offers

LL360 is a purpose-driven exploration model under Digital Foundry 360, blending:

UNICEF’s Social & Behaviour Change (SBC) principles (collective responsibility for well-being), and

Adaptive Practice principles (disciplined experimentation and co-creation within complex systems).

Each cycle of the Living Lab follows a learn-by-doing rhythm — framing, prototyping, and scaling innovations for systemic impact.

Phase Focus Sample Activities

Phase 0 — Sense & Frame Understand pain points and systemic stressors Empathy mapping, focus groups, stress and moral distress mapping

Phase 1 — Explore & Prototype Co-design interventions with nurses and leaders Reflective huddles, peer support systems, stress-first-aid pilots

Phase 2 — Test & Learn Measure impact, adapt in real time Well-being metrics, burnout reduction, engagement tracking

Phase 3 — Scale & Sustain Institutionalize proven practices Playbooks, dashboards, continuous learning loops

Each phase builds capacity, not just solutions — shifting the culture from “coping” to thriving together.

🤝 Potential Executive Sponsors

Ideal sponsors are those who see human well-being as a strategic driver of both clinical and organizational excellence.

Role Strategic Anchor

Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) Champion for frontline care and workforce vitality

Chief Strategy Officer (Shannon Sale) Aligns well-being with Vision 2030 and health equity goals

Chief People / HR Officer Embeds well-being in workforce policies and development

EVP Clinical Operations / COO Links nurse well-being with patient safety and performance outcomes

A co-sponsorship model between Strategy, Nursing, and HR would signal system-wide commitment.

🌿 What Success Looks Like

Reduced nurse burnout and turnover.

Improved patient safety and satisfaction scores.

Enhanced trust and psychological safety within trauma units.

A replicable “Nurse Well-being Playbook” for system-wide scaling.

Recognition of Grady Health System as a national thought leader in trauma-center well-being innovation.

🚀 Why Grady | Why Now

Grady’s legacy is built on courage, compassion, and care for the community.

By investing in the well-being of our nurses, we’re not just reducing burnout — we’re redefining what healthcare leadership means in the Agentic Era:

a shift from doing more with less to thriving with purpose.

 “Healing the healers is the first step in healing the system.”

Next Step

Convene a cross-functional discovery session (90 minutes)

to align vision, scope, and sponsorship for Phase 0 of the Nurse Well-being Living Lab.

Facilitated by Digital Foundry 360

in collaboration with Grady 360 | Vision 2030 and Living Labs 360