From Surviving to Thriving: A Self-Care Path to Resilience (P14)

Abstract

•Discuss the importance of having a self-care and a self-awareness plan when caring for seriously ill patients.•Practice validated methods to increase personal and team self-care, enhance self-awareness, and thrive in being resilient. It has been demonstrated that clinicians who care for seriously ill patients and their families are at high risk for diminished personal well-being, including high rates of burnout, moral distress, and compassion fatigue. Hospice and palliative care (HPC) clinicians become closely involved in the numerous physical, spiritual, and psychosocial challenges their patients endure, often forgetting to fulfill their own personal needs. Basic levels of self-care such as adequate sleep, love, belonging, security, and family well-being are crucial to ensure survival. If those needs are met, the path to thriving may begin by improving self-awareness, a stance that permits the clinician to simultaneously attend to the needs of the patient and oneself, leading to both enhanced self-care and improved patient care and satisfaction. How do we cease to strive for survival and begin to thrive when caring for the sickest of the sick? How do we foster resilience? Resilience is the quality that allows people to recover readily from stress or adversity. Resilience ensures a thriving path. This session will first describe levels of self-care in depth, as it pertains to personal self-care, team self-care, and the crucial need to incorporate required activities to enhance thriving. Further, self-awareness techniques/methods and resilience stories will be shared. Participants will 1) reflect on types of self-care and will work on a concrete self-awareness plan, 2) discuss alternatives to thrive by incorporating self-care as a career priority, such as peer-support groups and educational initiatives, and 3) use validated methods to enhance HPM clinicians’ self-awareness such as mindfulness meditation, the Johari Window Team Model, and reflective writing. Large and small group brainstorming will be encouraged to devise creative solutions and discuss alternatives to personal and team resilience. Networking opportunities will also be emphasized and encouraged.