Instruction
Work Environments, Self-care, and Professional Wellness
Work environments can help to mitigate vicarious trauma by cultivating an atmosphere where worker self-care is a priority. Employers can offer workers memberships to fitness centers, access to counselors, debriefing sessions after traumatic incidents, and mandate regular work breaks. These types of opportunities can provide workers with the necessary support they might need when working regularly with trauma survivors or during traumatic events. Workers who engage in self-care activities in their professional and personal lives can increase their overall wellness and effectiveness as a trauma-response helping professional. In contrast, work environments can influence the development of vicarious trauma by ignoring the needs of workers and neglecting self-care. Work environments requiring extended work hours with minimal breaks, or forcing workers to manage extremely large trauma cases can leave their workers vulnerable to vicarious trauma.
For this Discussion, think back to work environments you have experienced. Choose one organizational practice which promoted self-care and wellness and one practice which inhibited self-care and wellness. Consider the self-care and vicarious trauma implications of each.
Master’s Students
Post by Day 3 five ways that you think organizations, for instance counseling centers, could support a healthy work environment. This work environment would be protective against vicarious trauma. Offer specific details about what the work place would do to support employees and how these efforts would be helpful to those employees. How would leaders of the organization know that their efforts were paying off? Identify yourself as a master’s student at the beginning of your post. Identify yourself as a master’s student at the beginning of your post.