Nursing the Heart of a Healer
Written by Lorre Laws, PhD RN (www.iff-books.com)
Nurse Trauma and Burnout Recovery Guide
Nurse-specific trauma: A silent epidemic
In the demanding medical field, nurses play a critical role in providing patient care. However, many nurses experience trauma and burnout that are unique to their profession. This nurse-specific trauma is often the result of avoidable exposures caused by deficiencies within health care systems and organizations. Unfortunately, these traumatic experiences are often misdiagnosed as burnout or compassion fatigue, leading to a silent epidemic that is driving nurses around the world away from their profession.
The mass exodus of nurses from the profession represents a public health crisis. By the end of 2030, the world will need only half the number of nurses. Those who stay in the profession are often pushed to breaking point, leading to severe burnout, compassion fatigue, injuries, and problems with absenteeism and presenteeism.
Dr. Laure Laws, a nurse scientist and trauma burnout expert, wrote Nursing Our Healer's Heart: A Recovery Guide for Nurse Trauma & Burnout after five years of research across four disciplines. did. Dr. Lorre addresses personal and nurse-specific trauma with the goal of providing compassion, guidance, and a roadmap to healing in nurses' living spaces. Because nurses are human, they have endured individual traumas: acute, chronic, complex, developmental, and neglected. The unhealed or unintegrated trauma that all humans carry inside lives with them in the workplace. Nurses are no exception.
However, nurses, like other first responders, are among the highest-risk professions for exposure to trauma. Unlike other professions, 86% of nurses are more likely to experience secondary/vicarious trauma, the legacy of historical oppression and trauma, and workplace violence (physical, verbal, emotional, gaslighting, bullying, harassment). report having few or no resources to help them overcome work-related trauma, such as , extortion, coercion), insufficient resource trauma (e.g., understaffing, inadequate supplies), system-induced trauma, and disaster-induced trauma.
Many of these exposures are avoidable nurse-specific traumas that arise secondary to various healthcare system and organizational deficiencies. Nurses do not feel safe, heard, valued, or supported in their roles. They are making their voices heard by submitting resignations around the world. Simply hiring and training new nurses to replace them is not the solution. Because they too will be traumatized. A workable framework is needed to protect the nervous system from the effects of nurse-specific trauma that nurses experience every day in their professional roles. Given that 83% of nurses report burnout, 91% report having one or more symptoms of PTSD, and nearly 25% of nurses meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD, a solution is in order. It is urgently needed.
Dr. Lorre Laws developed Your Innate Care Plan (YICP), an evidence-based, four-step process to guide individual nurses and the global nursing community on their healing journey. At the heart of YICP is Dr. Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory. It provides guidance on the importance of learning the language of unintegrated trauma stored in a person's nervous system, vagus nerve, and body.
A simple explanation of YICP is as follows. 3A plus B leads to 3R
The first 3A’s are the foundation of trauma-informed health. Traditional self-care activities are not trauma-informed and do not consider the effects of unintegrated trauma, triggers, or nervous system dysregulation. Unless your self-care practices are built on a strong nervous system regulated by the Window of Tolerance, your self-care practices will crumble like a house in the sand. To ensure a strong nervous system supports all self-care activities, YICP starts with the 3A's:
The first A develops the ability to become a mindful observer, aware of one's inner landscape, and observe traumatic events and symptoms in a way that doesn't turn into a symptom. The second A is “attendance.” This shows how nurses can nurture and nourish their nervous systems, even on their busiest and most difficult days. Nursing Our Healer's Heart offers more than 100 practices for nurses to create their own care plans that align with their unique life experiences and tap into their own innate healing abilities. Finally, the third A of alignment examines the discrepancies and dissonance between the nurse's internal and external worlds and brings about harmony that is consistent with the nurse's values, goals, and objectives.
Building on that strong inner foundation, traditional self-care practices are added to the fourth step, B of Balance. This last step brings together traditions such as personal responsibility, physical and mental health, relational health, environmental and situational health, financial health, relaxing and recharging, and living in alignment with your beliefs. This is the most familiar one because it emphasizes the importance of self-care practices. , values, and purpose.
The 3Rs of Regulate, Repair, and Reconnect represent the outcomes of YICP. The first R in regulation reflects how nurses currently have their nervous systems regulated and thrive within a window of tolerance. The second R of recovery speaks to restoring the heart of the nurse healer, the reason for what matters most to them, including why they chose the nursing profession. Finally, the third R in Reconnection represents inner healing and a sense of connection within ourselves and with others.
As nurses become skilled in applying YICP to different nervous system circuits and hybrids, they learn about collective conditioning expressed through different archetypes and resistance patterns. Archetypes are introduced that are described as traumas that are unintegrated with long-standing collective nervous system adaptations that are inadvertently transmitted and embedded within the structures and systems that form the tapestry of everyday life. The archetypes are Volcano, Overworker, Controller, Distractor, Differer, Projector, Pleaser, Forsaker, and Ostrich.
Using archetypes helps readers understand their coworker's behavior through a compassionate and trauma-informed lens of “what happened to you?” One, instead of a critical “What's wrong with me!” Typical mixology is presented along with supportive strategies that nurses should use as a guide to identify which circuits and hybrids in their colleagues are online during times of stress and conflict.
Just as archetypes are group conditioning, so are the patterns of resistance we unconsciously use to cope with their emergence: hamster wheels, brick walls, and breakdowns. These resistance patterns are consistent with fight, flight, and freeze responses.
Importantly, nurses are provided with triune integrative nursing principles to guide change and trauma-informed safety and support nurses and those in their care. These principles can be used as a starting point for difficult conversations and necessary policy changes to enable nurses to perform their duties safely, professionally and appropriately. We all know that when nurses are safe, healthy, and thriving, it contributes to improved patient safety, patient outcomes, quality of care, and the financial health of their organizations.
By addressing healing scars rather than gaping ones, nurses can come together to usher in a new era of nursing. Nursing 2.0 Nurse Safety and Professional Health Edition.
Nursing: Our Healer's Heart is a gentle exploration of nursing-specific trauma, which affects 96% of nurses, and encourages nurses to thrive rather than simply survive in the profession. It lays out a workable recovery plan for you as you begin to heal together.
“Nursing Our Healer's Heart” by Lorre Laws, Ph.D., RN, is available at www.iff-books.com and wherever books are sold.
Read here > https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/iff-books/our-books/nursing-our-healers-heart-recovery-guide-trauma-burnout
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