Caring for Caregivers:  Reflective Practice for Professionals

Professionals who work with people who have ongoing health conditions can have experiences that are profound and moving.  These experiences can contribute to personal development and emotional intelligence.  However, this does not happen unless one takes the time to reflect on the experience and examine its implications for personal and professional growth. 

Compassion and empathy in the work of caregiving requires a mindfulness of what we bring to our work and an understanding of how our work transforms us. In order to remain open and responsive as professionals while doing emotionally and physically demanding work, it is necessary that we remain in constant touch with our own experience. As simple as this may sound, when we are overloaded it becomes all too easy to fall into routine, depersonalized patterns of care and to trivialize the need for self-reflection. Creative expression as a form of reflective practice makes it possible to re-vision our lives thus increasing our effectiveness in our jobs and in our personal lives.

Engage Families...

Learn ways to more fully engage families in a collaborative process that benefits both the family and those professionals and/or care-givers working to serve families.

Learning Objectives

Trainings can be designed to meet specific needs.  A few common learning objectives include:

Personal Growth

• More fully understand personal responses to the family/patient illness experience and situations.
• Identify how personal perspectives shape interactions.
• Use creative forms of reflection as a way to grow and to nurture self. 
• Increase spontaneity and capacity for inspired practice.

Professional Growth

• Understand how family/patient meanings (the thoughts and feelings they experience as a result of their given situations) shape the way they manage their condition
• Identify ways in which the creative arts serve as a means to increase patients potential for healing
• building a family-centered approach
• fostering resiliency & stress management
• avoiding burnout by growing from lessons learned

Workshops Comments

• I thought the training was very beneficial. It was a creative, feeling presentation concerning parent’s feelings and thoughts. If we can’t get emotional about the people we interact with and develop understanding, how can we possibly connect?
• It made me think about a parent’s perspective more, and it helped me to learn for myself how to meditate/reflect and take a moment to think.
• I will take more time to meditate/reflect and think about things, instead of jumping the gun.
• I will not take my position for granted in regards to how others perceive me. I will work more actively in valuing other people and their life circumstances in every domain.
• Yes. I not only was able to understand my feelings as well as better understand how life situations affect people in many ways. Thanks so much! It was wonderful.