Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Hosted by Maureen Metcalf

Conversations with global thought leaders on leadership, culture, and innovation—designed for executives navigating complexity and building resilient organizations.

Integrating Integrative Medicine in Leadership

Episode Description

Dr. Maryanna Klatt brings the rigor of integrative medicine to the question of leader and employee wellbeing, and the data is compelling. Her eight-week Mindfulness in Motion program, studied across dozens of healthcare workers, produced reduced burnout and stress, better sleep, lower inflammation, and stronger work engagement, benefits that held for more than fourteen months. She frames all of it in terms leaders care about, positioning stress and burnout reduction as a mighty tool for keeping the Great Resignation at bay.

Key Takeaways

The Mindfulness in Motion program teaches practical resilience techniques for high stress environments.
Study participants saw reduced burnout and stress alongside improved resilience and work engagement.
Benefits included decreased inflammation and better sleep, sustained for more than fourteen months.
Demonstrating that results last is nearly as important as demonstrating they work in the first place.
Reducing burnout and stress is a powerful, measurable tool for retaining talent.

Why This Episode Matters

Executives come away with evidence that investing in resilience and wellbeing produces lasting, measurable returns in engagement and retention.

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Featuring

Dr. Maryanna Klatt, Director of the Center for Integrative Health at The Ohio State University College of Medicine

Episode Topics

Culture Change • Measurement & Evidence • Team Effectiveness Under Pressure

Podcast Air Date

September 27, 2022

Episode Duration

56min

Watch the episode

Season 8

Episode Number 35

Episode Content:

Long-term Benefits of Mindfulness Intervention to Reduce Stress, Burnout

Maryanna Klatt, Director of the Center for Integrative Health at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, provided this article as a companion to her podcast Integrating Integrative Medicine in Leadership.

A new study is one of the first to show sustained benefits more than a year after completing a voluntary 8-week Mindfulness in Motion (MIM) intervention program offered by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center to reduce stress and build resilience among employees.

Study findings are published online in Explore: The Journal of Science & Healing.

MIM offers small-group sessions teaching health care providers and other interested employees specific techniques in mindfulness and resiliency for the high-stress environment health care can create.

Successful completion of this program has been shown to significantly decrease perceived stress and inflammation, as well as increase sleep quality and work engagement.

“However, you could argue these results mean nothing for the organization if a month after the program ends, usual stress and burnout levels return to base levels,” said Maryanna Klatt, the study lead author and creator of the Mindfulness in Motion intervention, which is the core offering of the Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.

“Demonstrating sustainability of the results of an intervention is nearly as important as demonstrating the effectiveness of the intervention, yet this is rarely done. Organizations need to be assured the return on their investment to reduce burnout and build resilience produces results that are maintained long after the intervention ends,” said Klatt, who is a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Klatt collaborated with researchers with the Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative and the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion at the Ohio State College of Public Health.

Klatt said she embarked on this research to learn if this intervention if worth their time for the individual participants, and worth the money and return on investment for the organization to invest in this program.

“After analyzing date from 66 participants, we found that three of the four outcomes (burnout, perceived stress, resilience) remained significantly improved beyond a year after completing the intervention. Work engagement remained improved, but was not significantly different than baseline levels,” said Klatt, who is now sending former participants “mindful moment” emails on a weekly basis and offering monthly virtual “booster” session to continue to reinforce the mindfulness techniques.

“As a health care organization focused on improving health for patients and communities, we also recognize the importance of prioritizing health and well-being for our faculty and staff. Interventions to address current levels of burnout among health care professionals must demonstrate long term success to help our employees thrive,” said Dr. Hal Paz, executive vice president and chancellor for health affairs at The Ohio State University and chief executive officer at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “More than 580 employees have participated in the Mindfulness in Motion program since 2017, and we are proud that this program is strong and growing, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Ohio Hospital Association asked Klatt if the Mindfulness in Motion intervention could be shared outside of Ohio State; now three health systems across Ohio and the Mercy Health System in Michigan are offering the program to their employees.

The Ohio Hospital Association also partnered with Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative to share free mindfulness resources and videos that Klatt developed to address provider resilience, especially as the pandemic continues to burden our health care teams.

“We also plan to repeat the sustainability study every other year to see if the positive results may even be sustained longer than the 14+ months we found in this study,” Klatt said.

Article courtesy of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Resources:

It’s no secret that the well-being of your workforce directly affects the well-being of your entire organization. Prior to the pandemic, most corporate wellness programs focused on physical fitness. The stresses of COVID quarantining, though, showed that mental health is every bit as important.

Integrative medicine ties both physical and mental health together, revealing many ways in which they influence each other. In this episode, Dr. Maryanna Klatt discusses the role of integrative medicine, how it affects our well-being, and why this is so important for leaders. Her own research focuses on mindfulness, but the Center works with and researches acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, yoga, massage, and more.

There’s a clear ROI for leaders: reducing stress and burnout is a mighty tool in keeping the Great Resignation away!

For daily wisdom from our guests, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @IL_Institute.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy

ITP: Building the Resilience Every Leader Needs with Christina Grote and Pamela Kramer
High-Performance Medicine: Healthcare’s Lesson for Your Elite Teams with Brian Ferguson
In Your Power with Dr. Sharon Melnick

Guest(s):

Dr. Maryanna Klatt, Director of the Center for Integrative Health at The Ohio State University College of Medicine

Guest(s) Bio:

Dr. Maryanna Klatt is the Director of the Center for Integrative Health at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Her research examines the impact of mindfulness for people challenged by chronic stress and burnout through her innovative program: Mindfulness in Motion. As a professor of clinical family and community medicine, she promotes whole-person health, creating educational, research, and clinical experiences for future integrative health providers.

Transcript