Medical and Correctional Personnel: Helping others…what about yourself?
Often medical professionals (doctors, nurses, therapists, etc) are called to help others, but, like other first responders, forget about themselves. You cannot help others effectively unless you care for yourself first.
Medical professionals such as nurses, doctors, and therapists and Court professionals such as probation officers, parole officers, and correction officers often help others, but struggle with their own self-care. Let this page bring you together.
NURSES, DOCTORS, THERAPISTS:
You frequently see people in crisis just after our first responders. You too need to be strong for those clients. Your career can be incredibly draining and has such a high burnout and turnover rate.
PROBATION AND PAROLE OFFICERS:
You don’t see these clients immediately, but they come across your door as well. Probation and parole officers are often out in the community with very difficult clients. You have a huge burden to help keep our community safe and “fix” people so they are no longer a danger to society. This by itself is draining and thankless, but it often comes with a lot of paperwork and unattainable expectations from superiors. Your job is at huge risk for burnout and is a very high turnover job because of this.
CORRECTIONS OFFICERS:
It may seem from the outside like you have a relatively simple job…people are locked up and you just “babysit” them. As you know, this is so far from the truth. You see a lot, deal with a lot, and are more than too frequently potentially putting your life on the line to keep order. You see and hear more than your fair share of potentially traumatic events on a daily basis.
Be honest, how well do you do on self-care? You know you “should” be exercising, doing relaxation, self-regulation, and have balance in life. But do you?
It is not uncommon for nurses, doctors, and therapists, correction officers, probation officers and parole officers to burnout after working at one agency/company/location for only a couple of years. This is a disheartening trend. As helping professionals, we need to do better on our own self-care until (and after) all companies provide a work environment that promotes self-care.
Using solution focused techniques, CBT and EMDR, I help you maintain your passion of helping others by either heading off burnout or redeeming yourself from burnout depending on your degree of distress.
Links to articles for Correction Officers
3 simple ways to battle correctional officer burnout
Stress, the Correctional Officer’s Silent Killer
Links to articles for Probation and Parole Officers
Probation Officers’ Stress and Burnout Associated With Caseload Events
Probation officers are stretched too thin, union head says
Stress Among Probation and Parole Officers and What Can Be Done About It
Coping with Stress: A Challenge of Today’s Probation Officers
Support for all Helpers
Links to articles for nurses
Work Stress and Burnout Among Nurses
Beating the Burnout
Links to articles for therapists
What I Wish I Had Known…Burnout and Self Care in Our Social Work Profession
Burned Out…And at Risk
Links to articles for doctors
Physician Burnout – the Three Symptoms, Three Phases and Three Cures
Burnout Among Health Professionals and Its Effect on Patient Safety