Practitioner well-being influences service provision

With a grant from the Vivian A. and James L. Curtis Center at the University of Michigan School of Social Work.

…we have collected data from 56 Michigan practitioners in ten Cities. Many of these cities are experiencing wrenching political changes. Natural resource crises, unemployment, and other traumatic events also affect how practitioners provide social and health services.

Using well-known reliable scales, we have found that, among the practitioners we interviewed, many had experienced traumatic events in their lives, and reported varying degrees of compassion fatigue, and having feelings of anxiety and/or depression.

These findings and extant literature suggest that psychological symptoms directly effect on Michigan practitioners, diminishing their capacity to collaborate interprofessionally and making it harder for them to help their clients. For example, those providers who reported feeling anxiety were less likely to refer their clients to HIV testing, a major life-saving strategy.

Our research shows that participants in our research were agreeable to receiving training on techniques to improve their well-being and service provision.

Providers were agreeable to training on techniques to ameliorate CF, including self-care strategies.