Health Professionals' Wellbeing
Psychological Therapies
Being a health professional does not exclude us from experiencing emotional difficulties similar to those experienced by the wider population.
Work pressures, interpersonal conflict at work or feeling that our personal values are misaligned with the team/organisation we work for can all lead to stress, low mood, anxiety, loss of motivation and drive. Also by working in a clinical setting we can be faced with traumatic incidents as part of the normal working life, which could cause intense emotions that may be difficult to contain and process without support from an appropriately trained professional. Not least, our personal lives can sometime cause us distress, especially at times of loss, bereavement, difficulties in our relationship with a partner or children.
From our past experience of working for a psychological wellbeing service for NHS staff, we understand the courage it takes a health professional to seek help for their own difficulties. Many of us are concerned about confidentiality, or that we may be perceived as unfit to practice if we were to disclose our struggles. Some of us experience embarrassment and/or self-blaming for struggling with mental health difficulties and particularly for not being able to 'fix' ourselves while helping so many others to overcome the same problems. Last but not least many of us working in a health setting are uncertain about how or where to find a service or a professional with the right level of experience or competence.
Here at Enable Wellness Consultancy, we believe that health professionals should have access to specialist psychological services as our needs are unique and access to statutory services can be difficult.
Enable Wellness Consultancy is a confidential service that has skilled and competent practitioners who are experienced in providing Counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Psychotherapy to health professionals.
Contact us if you want to talk about our service before booking an appointment.
Taking care, Giving Care Rounds (TCGC)
Balancing the needs of the patients and the demands of the job with our own needs can be at times a struggle. TCGC Round is a group session for health professionals that creates a space for staff to reconnect with their values and how they can consider their own needs while doing a caring job. This is a facilitated process that last an hour with a recommended size of 6-12 participants to ensure effective use of time. This is not a group therapy session but an opportunity for staff to reflect on how to balance the pressures of the job with self-care. This model is based on Compassion Circles, as developed by Andy Bradley (www.compassioncircles.net) and was been used in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board to support the delivery of their organisational employee well-being strategy.
The feedback received from staff on running TCGC Rounds is very positive, many reporting an increased awareness of their own needs and how to self-care.
Please give us a call if you are interested in introducing TCGC Rounds to your team.
Psychological First Aid (PFA)
When working in a clinical setting we can experience traumatic incidents as part of our normal working lives which can take different forms such as dealing with abuse (physical and verbal), suicides attempts and death of a patient or a colleague. Despite a high level of resilience and professional experience, at times we are not immune from experiencing adverse reactions to such incidents and therefore seeking appropriate psychological support is desirable.
Psychological First Aid is an evidence based approach to help you in the short and medium term after traumatic incidents. It is intended to minimise the distress that occurs after traumatic incidents and aims to help you develop ways of coping. When PFA is offered early on it can help the recovery process. Give us a call if you have any questions or you want to find out more about this intervention.
