Self Care

It is stressful caring for dying patients, and in situations with limited healthcare resources. This can lead to compassion fatigue (due to looking after suffering people) and/or burnout (due to working in difficult conditions).

Keep yourself healthy: healthy food, adequate sleep and regular exercise, time away from work.

Self-awareness is essential: monitoring your own emotions when working with suffering people.

Reflect on your emotions, learn new skills, find meaning in this work; leads to clinicians who are present and empathetic to suffering and feel energized rather than drained by it.

Strategies for managing stress

Mindfulness during work: (slow deep breaths, think of a loved one, pray, or imagine you are in a favorite place)
Mindfulness during work: As you walk outside taketime to notice something in nature;fully attend to it for a few moments
Connect with patients, families, orcolleagues; through humor or noticesomething about the other person or their environment
Deliberately shed your role when you leave work; donot take it home with you
Form a team to care for suffering people. With “team approach,” members support each another
Know your limits. Recognize difficult patient situation with family dysfunction, mental illness, or refractorysymptoms—cases when good outcomerare no matter how hard you try
Use challenging situationsto motivate yourself to learn new knowledge, skills, attitudes
Do what relieves stress – exercise, time with friends, sports
Write about experience and your feelings
Meditation
Have a special place you like to visit as a “getaway”