COVID-19 Staff and Physician Resources
In an effort to continue to support our staff and physicians working through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, below is a collection of resources and supports we hope you will find helpful.
The Health Sciences library has also posted a Guide to COVID-19 Resources that includes everything from help talking with kids, downloadable resources, health professional updates, and even search strings that can be used to find existing research. The resources have been reviewed for accuracy and are organized to be accessible. Many scientific publishers around the world are offering special collection access for free and libraries are working together to collect the best information resources. These can be found on the intranet (internal access only).
Support Services
A free online peer-to-peer support service that offers immediate online assistance to people struggling with anxiety, depression, and other common mental health issues. It is a safe community to support your mental health 24/7.
Psychology works for COVID-19. Psychologists giving back to front line service providers
The Canadian Psychological Association has provided a list of psychologists who have volunteered to provide psychological services to front-line health care providers at no charge.
Mackenzie Health’s Employee and Family Assistance Program (EAP) provider, Homewood Health, offers free, confidential counselling to Mackenzie Health staff.
The Distress Centres of Greater Toronto provide 24-hour support, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to individuals in our community at risk. Support includes emotional support, crisis intervention, suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention.
Resources
Managing Stress and Anxiety from COVID-19
Starling offers a free 5 session course to help build self-awareness, set healthier boundaries, create realistic goals to keep your life on track, use strategies and tools to balance your feelings and thoughts, and peer support.
Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Your Mental Health
This pre-recorded session offered by Homewood Health helps participants understand anxiety and depression and equips participants with strategies, tips and tools for regulating and managing their own emotions as well as tips for supporting others.
This online yoga app is offering free access to yoga videos for healthcare professionals. Sign up and have access to hundreds of yoga videos.
Managing your stress and anxiety during COVID-19 mobile app
CAMH has created an app that provides information and evidence-based coping strategies to help you manage stress and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now available for download on Android and iOS.
Mind control: Managing your mental health during COVID-19
This free course, offered by U of T, is to give you a deeper understanding of the anxiety reaction as it relates to various aspects of our current life, ranging from our consumption of news to the way we talk to our children about this. It will also give you clear strategies for managing and turning off the anxiety response at least for short periods. You will leave this course with a better understanding of how your brain reacts to crises, along with some powerful tools for managing it before it manages you.
The Wellness Society has created a comprehensive workbook of practical ways to live with anxiety during the pandemic including how to practice daily gratitude and breathing, tolerate uncertainty, and improve the quality of your social connections.
On-Demand Webinar: Mental Health and Resilience During COVID-19
The Crisis and Trauma Resource Institute offers an on-demand webinar that will explore mental health impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. Viewers will receive concrete guidance for building resilience and staying emotionally and mentally healthy during this stressful time, including insights for supporting children.
Wellness Together Canada offers self-assessments for distress, peer support resources, and other free tools for Canadians to use to improve their mental and physical health.
BounceBack® is a free skill-building program managed by the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). It is designed to help and manage low mood, mild to moderate depression and anxiety, stress or worry. Delivered over the phone with a coach and through online videos, you will get access to tools that will support you on your path to mental wellness.
The Calm app is offering selected free resources in English, German, Spanish, French, Korean, and Portuguese to help you meditate, sleep, and stretch. Thee site also features guided meditations for children of various ages.
Frontline Resilience provides a number of resources focused on specific topics including coping for first responder children, coping for first responder families, coping for leadership, coping for peer support teams, and coping through health can fitness.
COVID-19: Managing Stress & Anxiety
Homewood Health, shares an article on managing stress and anxiety and how to stay calm during this period of uncertainty.
Strengthening Mental Health and Wellness During COVID-19
The Ontario Hospital Association offers a list of provincial, national, and international mental health and wellness resources.
CAMH offers a comprehensive guide of resources to help health care professionals deal with the stress of the pandemic as well as resources focused on how to support patients.
Sustaining Yourself During the Coronavirus Crisis
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health offers a tip sheet with microsteps first responders can take towards managing stress and self care.
Dr. Craig L. Katz, Director, Program in Global Mental Health at Mount Sinai offers a resource with mental health strategies in the time of events like COVID 19.
Brené Brown on Coping in the Pandemic
Dr. Brené Brown, leader in shame and vulnerability research discusses three tips to better cope with the pandemic on CBC’s The Current.
Audio Resources by Anxiety Canada
Anxiety Canada offers downloadable audio resources where you can learn more about strategies to live with anxiety such as calm breathing, mindful body scans visualizations and more.
Coping with a Disaster or Traumatic Event
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a fact sheet about how to cope with a disaster or traumatic event such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emergency Responders: Tips for taking care of yourself
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers information about preparing for a response and identifying burnout and secondary traumatic stress including supporting resources about how to cope during and after a response.
COVID-19: 5 Tips to Face your Anxiety
Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and AllenComm offer 5 tips for facing your COVID-19 anxieties.
Coronavirus: A book for children
Axel Scheffler has illustrated a digital book for children ages 5-9, free for anyone to read on screen or print out, about the coronavirus and the measures taken to control it. The book answers key questions in simple language. Published by Nosy Crow, and written by staff within the company, the book has had expert input: Professor Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine acted as a consultant, and the company also had advice from two head teachers and a child psychologist.
How to Strike a Balance when Talking to Children about the Coronavirus Pandemic
The Globe and Mail offers parents strategies for talking to their children during the pandemic.
How to Talk to Children and Address their Coronavirus Concerns
CBC outlines strategies to talk to your children about their concerns during the pandemic.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers general principles and speaking points for talking to children about COVID-19.
Helping Homebound Children during the COVID-19 Outbreak
The Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress provides information about how to support your family in social isolation.
Caring for Children in a Disaster
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a factsheet to help children cope before, during, and after a disaster and includes common reactions children in distress will experience.
Am I safe? Exploring Fear & Anxiety with Children
The Compassionate Series is offering free family resources and activities to help children explore fear and anxiety during the COVID -19 pandemic.
As a leader, it is important to think about the pressures on your team and how they are coping through this time. While engagement is important, we also need to think about the risk of burnout. This Preventing Team Burnout resource offers suggestions on how to lead with this in mind
In times of stress, it is important to invest in one’s self and focus on strategies to enhance one’s resiliency, motivation and effectiveness. The following exercise allows you to rate your confidence in each of the focus areas and identify actions to help you enhance your effectiveness in each of these areas.
Powerful Coaching Questions for Leaders
Connecting with your team in a virtual environment can be hard. This Powerful Coaching Questions Resource is designed to help leaders spark important conversations with their team members.
Back to Business: 5 Strategies for Success in an Ongoing Pandemic
This document outlines five strategies leaders can take to ensure success as we work towards a new work normal.
Video Meeting Etiquette Guidelines
This one-page resource provides tips on practicing good video meeting etiquette to ensure meetings are productive and professional.
Coping with Corona – Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work and Home (Leadership Edition)
This e-book provides practical tools that will allow you to apply the skills of emotional intelligence and resilience to better lead your team through the pandemic.
The Canadian College of Health Leaders has created a one-page resource with ideas for how to lead in the time of a crisis.
ADAPTING TO A NEW REALITY: If you’ve suddenly become a virtual team
PeopleDynamics Learning offers four key ways that teams and leaders can use to adapt to working remotely and still ensure high quality team collaboration.
Leadership Communication: Anticipating and Responding to Stressful Events
The Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress highlights effective leadership communication in stressful events.
Leading with Compassion: Supporting Healthcare Workers in a Crisis
The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare offers a pre-recorded webinar about what healthcare leaders can do to support their teams during the COVID-19 crisis.
3 Ways to be a Strong Leader in these Turbulent Times
The Advisory Board offers ways for leaders to identify and temper extremes during the pandemic.
The Center for Creative Leadership offers 5 actions leaders can take to prepare and respond in a time of crisis.
Best Practices for Managing Virtual Teams and Meetings
The Center for Creative Leadership offers strategies for managing virtual meetings and teams.
How to Work from Home Effectively
Holland Bloorview offers information about working from home effectively including resources on maximizing efficiency and productivity remotely.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers approaches to reduce stigma during the time of COVID-19.
Stigma, Discrimination, Health Impacts and COVID-19
The National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health offers specific actions the public health community can take to address stigma related to COVID-19.
Keeping Yourself Healthy: Resilience and Stress Inoculation During COVID-19
The Ontario Medical Association Physician Health Program has highlighted resilience-promoting steps in this this two-page document.
Ensuring Our Own Wellbeing as We Care for Others During the COVID-19 Crisis
The Canadian Society of Physician Leaders shares “The 5 C’s of Resilience Framework” in this two-page document.
A clinician’s guide: managing COVID-19 stress and anxiety
In this article, written by Dr. Caroline Gérin-Lajoie, a psychiatrist and vice-president of physician health and wellness at the Canadian Medical Association, learn five tips to “run the COVID-19 marathon.”
How to talk to your kids about COVID-19: Considerations for health care providers
Talking with children about dangerous or scary situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult for all parents. This article highlights considerations for health care providers.
The Canadian Medical Association offers this physician health and wellness website with physician stories, tools, and resources.