Self-Care for healthcare staff
Burnout. You hear that word a lot in healthcare.
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The effect of regularly working long hours to fill staff shortages, shift work meaning that it is difficult to establish healthy routines of self-care and miss out on weekend goings-on, leaving you in a state of fatigue and exhaustion which is difficult to even notice as we just.keep.going.
We continue to show up, with the odd ‘mental health day’ here and there, but our ability to deal with challenging situations or workplace culture becomes more and more difficult. The pressure from high-stake decision making, and highly stressful and emotionally challenging situations means we find ourselves going home and crashing infront of the TV, mindlessly scrolling on our phones, or whatever it is that takes us away from thinking on events that occurred at work long after we have arrived home. The stress of the day, the week, the month remains unprocessed and contributes to a decline in our physical and mental health if not taken care of, as well as impacting on our capacity to show up for those who we wish to help, for our loved ones and for ourselves.
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What if I told you it doesn't have to be this way?
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Read on to find out more.
Healthcare environments are physically and emotionally taxing.
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The work is challenging enough already, and then Covid came along and added a whole new dimension of complexity. Workers in various settings experienced moral distress and vicarious trauma - both conditions which are commonplace in mental health settings. It is not surprising that high rates of burnout and PTSD amongst health staff have been reported globally post Covid.
For some workers, the stress of the pandemic brought up past trauma, yet our sense of duty towards our patients/consumers and our co-workers means we meet these challenges and just.keep.going.
However, it can be hard to deliver care the way we had hoped to when not only are we struggling to take of ourselves, but we are also unsupported in the workspace - with staff shortages, bullying and dealing with escalating behaviour all commonplace.
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My mission is to SUPPORT healthcare staff who are struggling with issues such as burnout, compassion fatigue, or PTSD via personalised 1:1 coaching, and to EMPOWER anyone working in the mental health or health space with accurate evidence-based, trauma-informed understandings and approaches that I have drawn from my 20 years + experience working in mental health to help you to be an autonomous, confident and resilient practitioner via Clinical Supervision.
See below for more details.
Services
Whether it is Clinical Supervision from an experienced certified clinical supervisor who uses a contemporary trauma-informed approach to help you navigate working in healthcare, or whether you are a healthcare worker seeking support for burnout or work-related stressors, see below for further information or click here to request a free 20 minute discovery call and find out about tax deductable rates.
About my approach
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Having trained as a mental health nurse in the UK, I started my career working in both acute inpatient and community teams before coming over to Australia 10 years ago. I continued to work in the acute mental health space in metropolitan areas as well as rural and remote communities, giving me a diverse picture of mental health and wellbeing.
A few years in I wanted to brush up on contemporary understandings of mental illness and came across the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and negative health outcomes in adulthood - in particular the ACE study via a Masters in Mental Health.
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This blew my mind because not only did it help me to understand what I was witnessing going on with consumers, but it totally changed my approach. This had knock-on effects on how fulfilled I felt at work and the meaning it brought to what I do. But that's not all...
I also got introduced to how our nervous systems work, and how stress and stressful events impact how our nervous system functions.
If left unresolved, these stored events impact how we react in any given moment, whether that is a current stressful situation, how we show up in relationships, and even how we think about ourselves and the world around us.
For many of us, our nervous systems are in a state of imbalance unless attended to with gentle approaches which serve to release the stress and tension from our system (somatic work!).
These imbalances can govern our life and hold us hostage to believing that we will always feel like this, that we are not in control of our reactions and behaviours, and that this is just how we are. Symptoms get classified and diagnosed as illness and 'managed' by medication and talk therapies but not necessarily 'healed', hence years of dependancy on both...
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The good news is...
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When we understand the nervous system, not only do we begin to understand our own behaviours, we understand that of others.
When we understand the nervous system not only do we learn how to effectively heal ourselves, but it changes how we approach and help others through their pain too.