Self-Care for Healthcare Workers

Hello. So today, we're gonna talk about Burnout, Secondary traumatic stress, and Self-care, particularly in the context of healthcare workers.

So, most of us have probably heard of Burnout from time to time. Maybe you've even heard it described by your co-workers or perhaps by your patients. So a lot of us use the words like drained, exhausted, maybe even apathetic to describe Burnout. So, Burnout is defined by Christine Maslock as consisting of three different things. And that

That is a reduced sense of accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization. So if you're not familiar with depersonalization, this is this feeling like you're detached from your body. It's almost like you're outside of yourself, watching yourself from the outside. You might feel numb, you might feel totally detached, and that's depersonalization. You might not be able to feel

sorrow or joy either. So we would call that a restricted range of affect. of Burnout include being in a high-demand work environment, having low resources, budget constraints, maybe low support, as well as low self-efficacy, where you're feeling like the need is so great and what you're doing doesn't seem to be making a dent in it. And so you might end up reevaluating what progress means, and you might focus instead on just trying to keep your head above water.

Healthcare workers are also more vulnerable to Secondary traumatic stress. Secondary traumatic stress is like PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, except rather than experiencing the traumatic event directly, like in PTSD, Secondary traumatic stress means that we have the same symptoms as PTSD, but the trauma itself was experienced indirectly, maybe from the content that you hear from your

Patients by viewing and witnessing the trauma that your patients are experiencing. So Burnout is more related to organizational factors like high demands, low resources, whereas Secondary traumatic stress is often related to the work itself or the content of the work itself, what you are witnessing and viewing on a daily basis. And it's important to note that there's an interaction between Burnout and Secondary traumatic stress.

People who are already experiencing Burnout are much more prone and vulnerable to the development of Secondary traumatic stress. All of us have various coping skills and resources that we rely on. So if those have failed in the face of a demanding environment, and we are now experiencing Burnout, they're also likely going to fail us in the midst of a traumatic event that we're witnessing. And so, we can develop Secondary traumatic stress when we already have Burnout happening.

Today, we're gonna talk about Self-care. Self-care is both preventative and an intervention, meaning that we can do Self-care to prevent the development of Burnout, and we can also implement some additional Self-care when we're already experiencing the symptoms of Burnout. I like to see Self-care like sunscreen. We put it on before exposure. Your work as a healthcare worker or a helper in general is gonna be naturally.

Fatiguing, which means that Self-care has to be part of the job description. It has to be part of what we do on a daily basis in order to protect ourselves. It's kind of like the saying that we hear on an airplane that I know that we're probably quite familiar with at this point, but we have to put our oxygen mask on ourselves before we help Other people. If you are not well, you will not be able to help somebody else. It will be very difficult to.

Help somebody else. And in fact, it could be harmful, um, instead of just a neutral effect. So when we're not well, when we're not implementing Self-care, we might not only become burned out, but we might actually become impaired as well. And that impairment can cause harm to the public. It could make you more vulnerable to liability issues. And so we have to treat Self-care like it's part of our job.

Take a look at your calendar and schedule in some time over the next week for Self-care, and treat it like it's an appointment. Schedule it in day and time, and treat that as an appointment so that when Other things come up, you're gonna have to work around it and schedule around it.

Yes, it is that important. We're gonna talk about Self-care through a couple of different lenses. So we're gonna talk about Self-care in terms of our physical Self-care, our cognitive Self-care, our emotional Self-care, interpersonal Self-care, as well as spiritual Self-care. So, we are multi-dimensional people, and we're gonna look at Self-care through that multi-dimensional lens because Burnout can impact us in each of.

These areas. So first of all, let's talk about physical Self-care. So most of you might already be familiar with the toll that stress and Burnout can take on your body. There's a great resource called Burnout The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagosky and Amelia Nagosky, and in this they really talk about how we need to speak.

Our body's language to express Self-care in the form of physical activity. And this helps us to be able to have outlets to release the stress that we hold within our bodies. And so speaking our body's language might include things like hiking, running, walking, dancing, any kind of physical expression that helps you to feel some stress relief.

This resource also provides a really great description of the importance of sleep and how sleep deprivation can really harm our physical bodies as well. So physical Self-care looks like physical exercise.

Attending to our nutrition rather than reaching for the quick energy resources like sugar and caffeine that maybe we feel like reaching to when we're most stressed and most burned out, but instead feeding our body the nutrition it needs, and then also getting some good sleep. So think about the things that you tell your patients about how to do some stress management to protect their bodies. That works for us as well.

All right, well, let's talk about how we can take care of our cognitive self. So Burnout can impact our concentration. We can have trouble focusing. We can have trouble remembering things that is usually pretty common information for us. We might neglect or kind of space out important tasks that we didn't used to forget about. And so it can really impact our ability to focus and concentrate. Ways that we might counteract this include flexing our muscle of mindfulness.

To developing a mindful outlook in life and ways that we can strengthen our mindfulness is through meditation. So, Matthew Sokoloff provides an excellent resource on mindfulness and some really accessible meditations as well, especially if you're just thinking about getting into this practice. It's a great place to start. So that book is called Practicing Mindfulness, 75 Essential Meditations to Reduce Stress, Improve Mental Health, and Find Peace in everyday.

Another thing to think about is you might find that you're feeling worse with an unfiltered ingestion of news and Social Media. So you might want to create some boundaries around that. Maybe you'll only look at news and Social Media before 7 p.m. and after 7 p.m. you just restrict yourself from accessing that. Or you might even um just say that there's going to be certain times of the day or certain times of the week that you

Get your news for that week, and then put it away for the Other times. Or maybe the practice for you is simply to increase your insight and awareness of how you feel emotionally, cognitively, and in your body when you're reading various headlines or looking at your friend's Social Media.

So, Burnout has been linked to depression. Uh, Burnout can cause numbness, anhedonia, meaning we don't experience joy or pleasure anymore. And one of the causes for that is when we're working in a high-stress environment, an environment where maybe we're exposed to secondary trauma traumatic events on a daily basis.

We don't always have time to recognize our feelings, feel our feelings, and process it right there. We have to set them aside, push it down, and then move on to the next task. The problem with that is it builds up over time, and we end up having a restricted range of affect and not being able to feel anything.

We have to be able to feel our feelings at some point and process it at some point. If we don't, we also can begin to manifest some physical symptoms. And so our emotions might be expressed somatically through physical health problems. So although it might not be safe to express our

Emotions every time we feel something at work. We can intentionally put aside time when it is safe and appropriate to express our feelings. That might mean finding a friend or coworker that we can talk to and be honest and vulnerable with. It might mean journaling and having a journaling practice where we can vent out our feelings in that way.

Or we might express our feelings more creatively through painting or art or dance, or anything like that.

We might also choose to see a counselor or therapist. And so you might decide that Self-care for you in this area looks like setting aside a time to speak with a professional counselor or therapist to have that space to process feelings in a really non-judgmental, safe atmosphere. So therapy is a wonderful way to increase our insight, to process our emotions, and to focus on some self-growth.

We are likely more aware now than we ever have been before about our interconnectedness as human beings. We are interpersonal, interconnected people, and we need to have some interpersonal relationships. So, Self-care for us in this area means connecting with people who love us and people that we love.

It means finding spaces with people where we're not the expert and we're not the helper, primarily, and being able to be vulnerable, to be our full self, to have some separation, and to have a personal life. You deserve to have a personal life, and you deserve to have some work-life balance. And if you're able to find opportunities for mutual touch, affection, and intimacy.

Your spiritual Self-care might include meditation, prayer, engaging in a religious or faith tradition that is meaningful and important to you. It might also look like separating and finding the difference between what you can control and what you can't control. It might mean walking through a process of mourning the loss that comes with things in our lives that we can't control, and then focusing and leaning into the things that are within our control.

Spiritual Self-care can also mean getting reconnected to your why. Perhaps it's difficult right now to remember the meaning and purpose that drove you to this field to be a helper, to care for Other people. If you can find that reconnection to your why, you can also increase that sense of purpose and meaning.

OK, so with these tips in mind, make your new Self-care plan today. Think about one or two things that we've talked about today, that have really resonated with you, that you feel like one of these things or two of these things would mean caring for yourself and being kind to yourself. And then, be patient. We can't implement everything all at once. Change comes gradually.

And slower. You didn't get here overnight, and so it's gonna be a process to walk out of it. The tips that we talked about today can be preventative, and we can also use it as an intervention when we're experiencing Burnout. However, self-awareness and self-knowledge is incredibly important in this process. And so I have a few questions for you to think about. On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means that you're at your

Absolute best, and 10 means that you're so burned out that you're impaired, and you might be harming the people that you work with. Where do you fall on that line? Also consider, how do you know when you're becoming burned out? What are your warning signs? Perhaps it's that you're becoming more irritable or more emotional or tearful than you usually are. Perhaps you've lost your sense of humor. What are those

Warning signs for you. If you're not too sure, maybe ask somebody who knows and loves you. So, another question to consider is, what is it unsafe for you to work? So we talked in the beginning about how Burnout can put us on a path towards impairment, which means that we're no longer able to work in a safe way, and that we might be at risk of harming Other people because we're just not at our best with our work.

And so, if we're at a place of impairment, where we are monitoring ourselves and we're recognizing it, or maybe we're monitoring each Other and we notice a coworker is on this path, we need to be able to help each Other and to be able to do a more drastic intervention when impairment seems to be happening. And so we might have to take a break and take a step back from our work. It doesn't mean that we'll never work again, but it might mean that we need to take

Some time off from work to be able to really engage in some restoration activities, um, and some more work-life balance development. And we might need to make seeing a therapist a priority in order to protect ourselves.

If you or someone you know is in a place of impairment, it's important for you to know that this likely happens because you might be working in a climate that doesn't facilitate these Self-care activities very easily. Perhaps you feel more like a machine and less like a human, where you're having to work so much, but not getting that work-life balance that you need and that you deserve.

And so there's no shame in asking for help and saying, I am human, and I need to take a step back and I need to take a break, and I need to focus on my Self-care, because you really are worth it. My name is Doctor Colleen Grunhos, and I'm a licensed clinical mental health counselor.

Counselor, educator, and a clinical supervisor. I also provide trainings on Burnout and Self-care. If your team or organization would benefit from one of these trainings, please send me an email at the address on your screen. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you for watching.