Workshop Description:
Join Dr. Kristen Slesar for a thought provoking consideration of the concepts of burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress (also known as trauma exposure response), discusses the ways in which even mental health providers fail to respond supportively to one another, and explores strategies for preventing and responding to trauma exposure response for individuals and agencies.
As agencies embrace the principles of Trauma-Informed Care, administrators and fellow clinicians continue to treat clinician care as a personal responsibility, even pathologizing those who experience burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress. With burnout as a primary cause of clinician error, however, the risks of neglecting clinician care are severe. This workshop presents trauma exposure response and burnout through a trauma-informed and structural humility lens in which responses are framed as both inevitable and manageable. Additionally, self-care and workplace care of providers is framed as an ethical imperative for clients, providers, and agencies alike.
Workshop Objectives:
As a result of this workshop, participants will be better able to
- Describe and differentiate the concepts of burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue
- Assess their current clinical practice and/or organization for risk and resiliency factors related to trauma exposure response
- Identify means of protecting themselves against trauma exposure response