How do we cope with emotionally intense work? How can we work deeply over time without losing ourselves or our health?
Posted on 15th October 2024 at 16:50
For more than 25 years now a strand of my psychology work has been in palliative care designing and delivering interventions for staff caring for patients with life limiting conditions and patients at the end of life. This has included developing team interventions for hospital and community palliative care services, designing and delivering a two-year programme of role consultation for paediatric palliative care nurses, creating opportunities for case supervision and reflection, and providing role consultation to senior palliative care clinicians including doctors, nurses and psychologists.
I have been struck by the deep meaningfulness of the work but also the predictable psychological risks it poses particularly over the course of a long career and in very stretched organisations.
So, I was delighted when I was invited to contribute a chapter to the 4th Edition of the Handbook of Palliative Care which has just been published by Wiley which allowed me to take stock of my work in this area and translate my experience into a guide for how to look after palliative care staff.
My chapter on managing the emotional impact of palliative care work covers looking outward (design, role, clarity, teamwork and management; looking inward (developing insight and understanding ones own motivation to do this work, psychological flexibility and agility, self-compassion, therapeutic coaching) and the view from above (thinking systemically, crafting organisational interventions). You can find out more about the book here.
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