Community health center staff, including health care providers and outreach staff, face the typical stressors of any job and daily life, with added challenges unique to their job, like feeling the stress and trauma their patients experience; limited staffing and turnover; and the feeling of overwhelm when unable to address the many needs of patients in the short time they have with them.
At the Witness to Witness Program at Migrant Clinicians Network, we support a variety of activities that clinicians can use to support their own well-being. Our recommendations are predicated on several beliefs we hold. First, small changes are not the same as trivial ones. Sometimes a small shift is sufficient to trigger a big difference. Thus, making a small change is worth the effort it takes. Second, finding one person you trust to enter into a “buddy” relationship can be helpful. For many people, knowing you can tell someone on a regular basis what troubles you is in and of itself comforting. When we share what burdens us, it lightens our load. However, by sharing we do not mean taking the other person’s burden on as our own. Our third belief is that there is a way of practicing empathy with patients that is helpful and a way of practicing empathy that can be troublesome. Our third suggestion is not to follow the adage, “To truly understand another person, walk in their shoes for a mile,” but rather to imagine what the other person’s journey is like when they walk a mile. Taking on – even in our imagination -- the struggles of others can be exhausting. Being a good listener doesn’t mean we enter into the other’s experience. It means we respond open-heartedly to what they want us to understand without feeling it ourselves.
In our resource, “A Daily Practice to Restore Equanimity,” we gather specific and simple measures that health care providers can integrate into their daily rhythm. This one-pager is also available in Spanish. Go to the resource page online to download as a PDF: https://www.migrantclinician.org/resource/daily-practice-restore-equanimity-w2w-resource.html
