PS499 Unit 8 Applied Intervention Plan Example

Dawn Walks for the Night Crew: A PS499 Unit 8 Applied Intervention Plan

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS499: Bachelor's Capstone in Psychology

Unit 8 Applied Intervention Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The hospital, its departments, the costs and the crew are composite and illustrative; the studies cited are real.

Purpose

My capstone proposes a randomized pilot of awe walks for the night housekeeping crew. A research study takes months to approve and run. Meanwhile, the night crew I lead in Lansing, Michigan, is tired now. This plan describes how the environmental services department could offer awe walks as an ordinary workplace program, drawing on the evidence that exists while the study is under way.

The evidence is promising but not proven for this group. Night work carries well-documented risks to sleep and health (Kecklund & Axelsson, 2016). Workplace stress programs, on average, reduce stress (Richardson & Rothstein, 2008). And a trial with older adults found that weekly awe walks increased positive emotions and reduced daily distress (Sturm et al., 2022). A program built on that evidence is reasonable as long as it is low-risk, voluntary and honestly evaluated.

Program Design

Dawn Walks will be offered three mornings a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, immediately after the night shift ends at 7:30 a.m. Each walk lasts fifteen minutes and follows the river trail behind the hospital and the top level of the east parking ramp. Walks are voluntary and open to all night environmental services staff, and to night staff from other departments once the program is running smoothly.

Each walk begins with a one-minute invitation from the walk leader, adapted from the awe walk study: notice something vast or unexpected, whether in the sky, the river, the light or the people around you. Walkers then walk at their own pace. At the end, the leader asks one person, if they want to, to name what they noticed.

The program asks for fifteen minutes and one minute of attention; the rest is a walk that many of the crew already take on their own.

Staffing and Training

Two volunteer walk leaders per day, drawn from the crew, will share the role. Each will receive a one-hour training from the employee wellness office covering the invitation, the route, safety procedures and how to respond if someone is upset. Leaders will rotate monthly. I will coordinate the schedule but will not lead walks regularly, so that attendance does not feel tied to the supervisor.

Budget

The main cost is paid time. Fifteen minutes three times a week for an average of eight walkers is six paid hours a week. At the department's average night wage with benefits, that comes to roughly $190 a week, or about $9,900 a year. Training for leaders requires about four hours of wellness staff time per quarter. Materials, such as a laminated route map and reflective vests for winter mornings, cost about $150. The department manager has agreed to fund a three-month trial from the existing wellness budget.

Safety

Tired workers walking at dawn face real risks. Walks will be canceled when the National Weather Service reports ice or a wind chill below zero. Leaders will carry a phone and know the location of the nearest emergency entrance. Walkers can stop at any time, and no one will be asked to explain why they skipped a walk. Workers driving home afterward will be reminded that the program does not replace sleep, and that anyone feeling drowsy should rest before driving.

Evaluation

The department will track three things without a researcher. Attendance, by first name only, will be kept by walk leaders and reported monthly as totals. A three-question anonymous survey every month will ask how stressed workers have felt, whether the walks help and what should change. At three months, the department will compare turnover and sick calls among night staff with the same period last year, recognizing that many factors affect those numbers.

If the research pilot runs, the program will pause at the hospital where the study takes place, to avoid mixing the two. Its results will help the department decide whether to continue, expand to other night staff or stop.

Getting Started

The first month matters most. In week one, the department will announce the program at all three night shift meetings and post the schedule in the break room in English, Nepali, French and Swahili. In week two, walk leaders will complete training and walk the route together once. The first walks will begin in week three, timed to the season so that sunrise falls close to the end of the shift. At the end of week six, the walk leaders and I will meet with the wellness office to review attendance and the first survey, and adjust the time, route or invitation before the program settles into its routine.

Sustainability

The program is designed to be cheap and simple enough to survive changes in leadership. If it continues after three months, I will propose that walk leader training become part of new staff orientation for nights, and that the wellness office adopt the program for other departments with night workers, such as food services and security.

Conclusion

Dawn Walks turns a research question into a modest workplace program: fifteen minutes, a one-minute invitation, two trained volunteers and clear safety rules. It rests on promising evidence, costs less than a single new hire's training, and includes measures that will show the department whether it is worth keeping.

References

Kecklund, G., & Axelsson, J. (2016). Health consequences of shift work and insufficient sleep. BMJ, 355, Article i5210. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i5210

Richardson, K. M., & Rothstein, H. R. (2008). Effects of occupational stress management intervention programs: A meta-analysis. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 13(1), 69-93. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.13.1.69

Sturm, V. E., Datta, S., Roy, A. R. K., Sible, I. J., Kosik, E. L., Veziris, C. R., Chow, T. E., Morris, N. A., Neuhaus, J., Kramer, J. H., Miller, B. L., Holley, S. R., & Keltner, D. (2022). Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion, 22(5), 1044-1058. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000876