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As we have discovered in the previous sections of this toolkit, the goal of compassion resilience can be reached with the application of personal skills and perspectives combined with organizational policies and practices. In this section we will focus on the systemic factors that can negatively impact our compassion resilience and explore our response and potential role in making positive change.
We all work in imperfect systems. When we look outside of our own system to those that we rely on to provide for the health and well-being of the people we serve, we find more imperfection. The first step in lessening the negative impact of the systems in which we live and work is naming what it is about the systems that contributes to our compassion fatigue. The second step is to discover which items on that list we can change, which ones leadership can and will address, and which ones we would best be served by letting go.
What Can I Control? Activity Write-Up
Toolkit Facilitators and Leadership Team, Please Review Prior to Implementing What Can I Control? Activity
The following is a review of system factors that lead to compassion fatigue and those that are protective. Keep these factors in mind as you facilitate the combined staff and leadership activity, What Can I Control?, and if you are on the leadership team, use this information to prepare and respond to the activity.
Video: Excerpts from Section 4 Activities
SPIRIT: Humor and Core Values
Reflect on what are you doing when you feel most alive – most like yourself?
The majority of people when asked this question do not immediately go to a situation at work, but rather a place outside of work where they feel most alive. If that’s the case for you, when is a time at work when you feel most alive?
When you go home from your workday, do you have a tendency to share what happened in your day that left you feeling most alive or what was most draining? Our bodies experience the stress we relive in our conversation to some degree as if we were experiencing it again. Sharing the hard parts of our day may be needed to be understood and validated. We can become aware of when it moves from helpful to hurtful. We have a choice about how much time and on what we focus when talking about our work. One practice to play with is to include what made you feel most alive in your day as you talk with friends and family
Staff Circle Agenda, Section Four
System Drivers – Use this Visual and Display in Staff Break Areas
Posting this visual in common staff areas will serve as a reminder of content covered to staff and perhaps serve as a future conversation started for deeper reflection among staff members.
You can find all documents in this section included in this pdf for easy printing.
The documents included are numbered individually, not as one document.
Leadership Considerations specific to Drivers of Fatigue and Resilience – Youtube
This section will focus on the systemic factors that can negatively impact our compassion resilience and explore our response and potential role in making positive change. Hear how this leader helped their team minimize their fatigue and increase their resilience in the workplace.
The National Academy of Medicine’s all-encompassing conceptual model of factors affecting clinician well-being and resilience is a good resource for those wanting a deeper dive into the external and internal factors that can contribute to both compassion fatigue and resilience: A Journey to Construct an All-Encompassing Conceptual Model of Factors Affecting Clinician Well-Being and Resilience
Family and friends are important support systems as well. This article speaks to using that support to help protect against burnout in the health care field: Ask Your Family for Help with Burnout
