Restoring Strength From Within: How One Hospital Group Reclaimed Emotional Resilience With 1to1help

Building emotional resilience for caregivers: A Case Study

In the quiet moments after a code blue event,when the machines are silent and the hallwaystills, something lingers in the air. Grief, doubt,and a kind of exhaustion that has nothing todo with sleep.

Across India’s hospitals, these moments playout almost every day.

• A nurse loses a patient despite doing everything right.
• A doctor walks away from high-risk surgery with shaking hands.
• A technician bears witness to suffering but has no outlet to process it.

Their faces remain composed. Their duties continue. But inside, something shifts.

At one of India’s largest multi-specialty hospital networks, with over 16,000 employees working across dozens of sites, that unspoken emotional strain was starting to show. Not in dramatic outbursts—but in the small cracks.

When HR leaders began to connect the dots, a pattern emerged: a quiet epidemic of emotional distress, most acutely felt by nurses and frontline caregivers. Those trained to heal others were carrying wounds of their own which were often unseen, unspoken, and untreated.

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When Caregivers Need Care

At the centre of this challenge was Second Victim Syndrome (SVS)—a condition that refers to the significant emotional and psychological distress experienced by healthcare professionals following adverse patient events. Nurses were struggling with overwhelming guilt, self-doubt, and trauma in the aftermath of patient complications or unexpected outcomes.

Combined with long shifts, clinical pressure, and a cultural hesitancy to speak up, the hospital’s staff silently bear emotional wounds without adequate support. Despite having an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) in place, awareness and usage were low. It became clear the traditional EAP model wouldn’t work. 1to1help offered an EAP that was preventive, compassionate, industry-informed, and brought a new perspective on well-being.

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A Human-Centered Partnership

The hospital group turned to us – 1to1help, India’s most trusted EAP provider. What stood out was not just our clinical expertise, but our cultural sensitivity and ability to design programmes thats poke the language of frontline healthcare workers.

Together, we launched a series of initiatives tailored to the everyday realities of life inside a hospital.

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Key Initiatives

• A custom 60-minute SVS workshop, designed using real stories from the hospital’s own nursing staff. It addressed trauma response, emotional regulation, and peer support.
• A series of on-ground self-care campaigns during International Self-Care Month, across five cities, blending interactive sessions on stress, confidence building, and mindfulness.
• Biannual EAP orientation drives employees, managers, and leadership—with live app walkthroughs and privacy assurance.
• A PHQ9 mental health screening via mobile, to quietly but effectively map emotional health trends across the organisation.

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Rolling It Out, One Unit at a Time

The deployment began with 8 hospital sites, where over 800 nurses and managers participated in the SVS program. The sessions were filled with quiet nods, tears, and relief.

Next came the self-care campaigns in Kolkata, Howrah, Jaipur, Delhi, and Bangalore. These were safe spaces, co-created by employees and facilitators, where emotional wellbeing finally had a seat at the table.

At the same time, EAP awareness sessions were scaled across 20+ locations, supported by visual campaigns, QR codes, WhatsApp nudges, and a redesigned onboarding experience that made mental health support just a click away.

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Our story in numbers

The numbers told a powerful story:

• 1594 new EAP registrations during the campaign; a 7xjump from previous months
• 130+ counselling sessions booked within 6 months of campaign roll-out
• 540 PHQ9 surveys submitted, many by employees who had never used the EAP before

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But behind the data were the human truths. The PHQ9 screening revealed:

• 42% of respondents showed mild symptoms of depression
• 25% were moderate
• 10% showed moderately severe symptoms
• 4% were severe

These trends spanned across departments, genders, and age groups confirming that mental health didn’t discriminate.

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‍The Cultural Ripple

What began as a set of workshops became a shift in culture.

Team leaders started referring employees to the EAP with confidence. Nurses began checking inon each other after emotionally difficult shifts. Conversations once held in hushed tones are now happening at team huddles. Mental health was becoming a shared responsibility.

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Looking Ahead: The journey has just begun

This was just the beginning. The hospital is now:

• Expanding trauma and SVS workshops to other clinical units
• Introducing financial wellbeing, grief support, and burnout prevention programmes
• Using PHQ9 data as a predictive tool for early mental health intervention
• Embedding emotional wellbeing into leadership development KPIs

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Ready to Create a Workplace Where Caregivers Feel Cared For?

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