Therapy for Healthcare Professionals
Healthcare Professionals Deserve Support and Care Too
You may be a fellow psychologist, a counsellor, or a social worker. You may be a physiotherapist, occupational therapist or a therapy assistant. You may be a doctor, a nurse. A medical or nursing student.
Whatever your area of expertise, you are a healthcare professional or a professional in the making. Healthcare professionals are faced with a unique position in their respective work roles. While getting to experience the intrinsic satisfaction of caring for patients/clients at times, the caregiving processes often place high levels of demands and expectations – and potentially also take a toll on healthcare professionals.
To name a few, healthcare professionals often draw on their own physical and emotional resources, initiative, and personal time on top of working hours, to provide direct patient/client care as well as engage in backend patient/client-related preparatory work (e.g. reviewing patient/client-related caregiving materials, research literature; attending trainings). At work, healthcare professionals face various challenges which include maintaining a high standard of patient/client care in fast-paced environments, run the risk of patient/complaints and abuse, and not least, facing or re-experiencing traumatising events during the course of their work in the course of their work. How do healthcare professionals fare in Singapore?
Recent studies indicated that a large proportion of healthcare professionals in Singapore, especially allied healthcare professionals, between July 2019 to January 2020 were likely to have experienced burnout (Tan et al., 2022). Another study which studied the rates of anxiety, depression and burnout in doctors, nurses and allied health professionals between 2020 and 2021 (middle of the COVID-19 pandemic), found increased proportions of reported burnout, anxiety and depression, that were associated with existing and increased working hours, for instance (Teo, et al., 2023).
Source:
Tan, K.H., Lim, B.L., Foo, Z., Tang, J.Y., Sim, M., Lee, P.T., & Fong, K.Y. (2022). Prevalence of burnout among healthcare professionals in Singapore. Annals, 51,409 – 416. https://doi.org/10.47102/annals-acadmedsg.2021338
Teo, I., Chay, J., Quek, L MX, Sung, S. C. & Tan, H.K. (2023). Healthcare worker job burnout, anxiety and depression: A one-year comparison during COVID-19 in Singapore. Annals, 52, 268 – 270. https://doi.org/10.47102/annals-acadmedsg.2022370
Common Issues Healthcare Professionals Face
The healthcare profession is a challenging one. Saving lives, helping patients/clients turn their lives around, risk of infections, risk of patients/clients’ suicide, accountability issues, and risk of lawsuits or abuse, Yet, in the face of all these tasks, there is an implicit expectation of healthcare professionals – by healthcare professionals themselves, patients/clients and their next-of-kin, to maintain a composed and professional demeanour. This can easily convey the message that healthcare professionals are to be perfect, stoic, and not to falter. Similarly, healthcare professionals often experience the Impostor Syndrome more than other workers, thinking that they are falling short, despite past consistent demonstration of competence (e.g. beliefs of not doing enough, that current accomplishments are not good enough). This can result in higher levels of occupational burnout, professional unfulfilment and suicidal thoughts (Moskal, 2022).
Healthcare professionals offen also hold high, unrelenting standards of themselves that can hinder them for seeking support and the help that they need, while also paving the way for the Impostor Syndrome and burnout to develop (e.g. belief that they play the helping role, and should not be receiving help themselves; belief that they need to be error-free and is overly self-critical about making errors; need to be working excessively long hours in order to serve patients/clients well).
Below are some common and non-exhaustive experiences that healthcare professionals frequently go through.
a) Mood disturbances
High levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms (see Depression, Anxiety symptoms)
b) Compassion Fatigue
Some common signs:
i) Difficulties with empathising or taking the perspective of patients/clients,
ii) More easily irritable or frustrated with patients/clients, friends and loved ones
iii) Withdrawing from social interactions.
iv) Decreased or no capacity to care for loved ones
c) Burnout
Some common signs:
i) Can include the Mood Disturbances and Compassion Fatigue symptoms as indicated above.
ii) Constant feelings of being overwhelmed, emotional and physical exhaustion,
iii) Constant feelings of disillusionment or detachment from the job,
iv) A sense of cynicism, ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment
d) High, Unrelenting Standards and Self-Expectations
Some common signs: i) Beliefs about maintaining a perfect and error-free practice, and intense self-criticalness othewise.
ii) Beliefs that they are the helper and cannot seek or receive help.
iii) Imposter Syndrome: Beliefs that they fall short, when actual standards and competence are being consistently demonstrated.
iv) Maintaining perfectionistic as a compensation for perceived inadequacies and insecurities elsewhere in life.
Source:
Moskal, E. (2022, September 15). Physicians experience impostor syndrome more often than other U.S. workers. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/09/physicians-imposter-syndrome.html
How Therapy for Healthcare Professionals Can Help
It may be a strange, and perhaps vulnerable experience for some healthcare professionals to consider seeking any sort of professional or informal (friends/family) support for themselves.
What can be helpful is to pause, and consider that you are only human, and that you deserve the support to address the temporary ruts in your well-being, just like your patients/clients do! You are not alone – there are many other healthcare professionals who are also in the same boat as you, and can benefit from some form of professional support. What is more, identifying and addressing the obstacles you are facing, can potentially be freeing and fulfilling – and you can serve your patients/clients better in turn!
How I Work with Healthcare Professionals at InPsyche Journeys
1. Individual Psychological Therapy
As always with therapy client, I adopt a Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) lens to explore what each fellow healthcare professional-cum-colleague wants different as a result of working together with me. Underlying contributing factors associated with the obstacles and challenges will be explored. Therapeutic strategies will be developed according to each healthcare professional’s needs.
Some common approaches that I draw from include but are not limited to the following:
a) Mindfulness-based strategies & Incorporation of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
- – To increase awareness of beliefs, and associated emotions as well as behaviours which are helpful or unhelpful to their well-being.
- – Acknowledge these beliefs, emotions and any accompanying emotional distress
- -If relevant, to explore the accuracy of specific beliefs, tapping on CBT.
- – Actions: To consider small steps of actions/behaviours that contribute towards better well-being. The SFBT approach may be incorporated here.
b) Exploration of Past Significant Events Associated with Pertinent Beliefs/Standards
- – At times, healthcare professionals just like any average person, had experienced certain significant adverse life events or environments when growing up, which shape their outlook and beliefs towards the world (e.g. a world of competition and need for continual striving), themselves (e.g. high, unrelenting standards towards self) and other people (e.g. others’ needs matter more than mine).
- – Modalities which I draw on to help explore past experiences include Schema Therapy and Expressive Therapy approaches (e.g. Sandplay/Symbol Work)
2. A New Initiative: Support-Cum-Learning Groups
Healthcare professionals who experience the above-mentioned situations can often experience a sense of isolation, alientaion and demoralisation. Tapping on a new initiative that I have recently developed, I am inviting healthcare professionals to join a Support-cum-Learning Group for Healthcare Professinals. My hope for this group is to harness the power of the group to spread support, sharing and learning amongst fellow healthcare professionals in ways that complement individual therapy, or good on its own – e.g. the power of normalisation and validation of having other healthcare professionals in the group, hearing and developing for and together with each other strategies.
How I Add Value Through Therapy for Healthcare Professionals
To my knowledge, InPsyche Journeys is one of the few places in Singapore that has Clinical Psychologists providing psychological therapy to healthcare professionals, at this point in time (Oct 2024). As a Clinical Psychologist, I can add value to the therapeutic journey by providing an additional edge, via exploring and addressing any underlying maladaptive symptoms/patterns, while facilitating growth, self-discovery and healing.
My person-centred, feedback-informed approach that I adopt in therapy for healthcare professionals will ensure a customised therapeutic journey for each healthcare professional
In line with the theme of decreasing the sense of isolation that often surrounds healthcare professionals who are experiencing emotional distress as discussed above, I believe that the new initiative of bringing together healthcare professionals in support-and-learning groups is a useful and not-often-seen format to promote group learning, support and a sense of validation through group dynamics.