By Bruce Cochrane.
A health promotion and communications researcher suggests, helping animal health professionals cope with the stresses they deal with in their work requires a community based effort.
"Burnout and Compassion Fatigue in Veterinary Medicine" was discussed last month as part of the "International One Welfare Conference" in Winnipeg.
Brenda Lovell, an independent health promotion and communications researcher, says dealing with stress on the job begins within the organization itself.
Brenda Lovell-Independent Researcher:
They should be helping to supply workshops, they should provide family friendly policies so that you are able to mange the work life balance which is a major issue in any type of profession.
Also there should be some help with what we call the stress management strategy so what types of things can you do to help support people so they don't become burned out, so they don't get compassion fatigue.
Also you can do things for your own benefit such as your own self care practices.
When you're done at the end of the day, what kinds of things can you do to help yourself to recover from the day.
There are different coping strategies that are discussed in the literature.
There are emotion focused studies, which some of us do every day, which I do as well, such as going for a walk, listening to music, turn on lighting, walk outdoors, a lot of the things that can help to calm down our emotions.
Then there's problem solving approaches, which is trying t tackle specific problems that may be leading to that stress.
If you can maybe rework something that you're doing in your practice or try to make things better, that can be a problem focused strategy which then solves the difficult things arising through the stress.
So there's quite a range of different people who should be involved.
Lovell says peer support can be a valuable tool.
She says colleagues can support one another through meetings to talk about issues, offer input when they notice signs of burnout and support to each other.
Source: Farmscape