Psychological and Emotional Support in the Workplace: Can It Make a Difference for the Longer Term?

Abstract

This chapter starts with an overview of the effects of workplace and external stress on health professionals, and how the developing recognition of the damaging effects on the workforce points to a need for support. The system of support that I developed over 17 years in collaboration with colleagues is described. It was provided for all of the staff working in a Paediatric department in the demanding area of child abuse in the NHS. Because this work continued over a 18 year period it inevitably meant seeing individuals over considerable times which created both challenges and opportunities. The constant objective was to make available psychological and emotional support in order to prevent professional and emotional harm, and to enhance the service received by children and families. Consultations drew on my training in systemic and psychodynamic psychotherapies but was not formulated as therapy. It often dealt with Interface of professional and personal lives and relationships and had an underlying theme of the central importance of trust and of compassion. As the work progressed, my own supervision became increasingly important, and was one aspect of the emerging recognition that professionals have a duty to look after themselves. A final perspective is that the work is concerned with resilience, not as a quality of the individual but a function of the work context and the adaptation of the individual within it.