Presenter Profile
Vikki Pennington, LMSW, CCLS, CPST
TIRR Memorial Hermann/Children's Memorial Hermann
victoria.pennington@memorialhermann.org
Vikki has been a child life specialist for over twenty years, obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Human Environmental Science with an emphasis in child development at the University of Arkansas. She received her Masters of Social Work from the University of Houston. Her career as a child life specialist started at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH), where she completed her internship. With her internship completed, she obtained employment with Texas Children’s Hospital in the Emergency Center for almost four years. An opportunity arose to work for Shriner’s Hospitals for Children for Orthopedics, Rehab/Subacute, and Cleft Lip & Palate, where she stayed for eleven and half years. For the last 8 years, she has worked at Children’s Memorial Hermann in the Neonatal ICU IV and recently moved into the Pediatric Inpatient Rehabilitation unit at TIRR Memorial Hermann. Vikki has also been a Child Passenger Safety Technician for about 20 years. She has always had an interest in making sure children were safer leaving than they came into the hospital. Along the way, Vikki has grown a passion for helping others with grief, bereavement, and trauma and has been able to do that through the Code Lilac peer-to-peer psychological first aid program. Being a founding member of Code Lilac in 2015, Vikki continues to lead this program system wide. Vikki’s dedication and commitment to supporting children, families, and peers has shown through her achievements over the years.
Presentations
Peers Supporting Peers: An Institutional Approach to Reduce Mental/Emotional Injury
Vikki Pennington, LMSW, CCLS, CPST
Beginning at one of the busiest pediatric Level 1 trauma centers, a volunteer emotional first aid program (Code Lilac) launched in 2015 with the goal to provide compassionate, confidential, and timely peer-to-peer support to members of the healthcare workforce experiencing stressful work-related events. During the pandemic (March 2022), this not-for-profit health system, comprised of 17 hospitals and more than 30,000 employees in a large metropolitan area, adopted this program as a system-wide approach to support all staff within the community. Psychological distress related to providing health care was present prior to the COVID pandemic and has become a leading factor in provider’s intentions to leave their profession (1, 2). Policy implications also support this type of programming, as the Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum has now recommended healthcare institutions to recognize “second victims’ needs” and establish a support structure to assist them through coping with traumatic medical events (3).
Code Lilac supports peer responder teams to 14-hospital campuses. The interdisciplinary team includes 100 leaders and more than 550 peer responders. These teams were trained and supported from consultants at Johns Hopkins (RISE) Resilience in Stressful Events Program (3). Interventions include individual support, group support and pro-active support services. Data on peer responses was generated as part of program development and improvement process.
To date, this is the largest peer responder program in the United States. Over 5,000 individuals have benefitted from Code Lilac through individual or group support. Since November 2022, 100+ calls have come through the Code Lilac Hotline, which is open to the entire 30,000+-member workforce including nearly 200 outpatient locations, home based services and remote workers. These responses have addressed a variety of traumatic or stressful workplace events including: cumulative stress related to patient care, fetal demise, maternal deaths, death of a child related to non-accidental trauma, suicide of a colleague, and medical errors.
The program’s high utilization demonstrates the need for peer support in the aftermath of stressful events, as well as the receptivity of the workforce members to accessing emotional first aid support. Presenter will discuss core components of the program, ethical and professional considerations, and strategies for ensuring utilization of the services. Next steps include designing a robust prospective psychological study on the impact of participation in a peer responder program.
1. Describe the burden of burnout among Healthcare Professionals
2. Recognize steps to implement a volunteer based peer-to-peer emotional first aid program across a large health system
3. Distinguish outcomes of supporting staff during aftermath of stressful events