My research project has gotten very exciting just in the past week. We are starting to see some really cool data from our surveys, and we are kicking off virtual interviews after troubleshooting some unforeseen connection issues. Rather than just writing plans and talking about them, we are now diving into them, and it has meant getting to do more thinking about the topic in broader, more exploratory ways rather than just thinking about logistics. It’s also meant that I’m spending a bit more time on the project over the past week than I have in previous weeks in the program (thus being a day late on this – sorry y’all).
Lately this project has me thinking about what it means to cultivate community. By this I mean how and if it is created in certain spaces, what that community looks like, what purpose it serves, and how it follows through in serving that purpose. As a public health major, I talk about community-driven solutions in almost all of my coursework. We talk about why it’s important and how public health can function to facilitate communities working as a unit through providing the resources, the program structures, and the information required to initiate action. But I’ve realized that through all of this, I’ve never critically assessed what it means to recognize where community support is missing, and how this can be a preventative action rather than a reactive one. For example, within my research, we ask our participants about both their existing support systems and the tools they use for coping and support after a maternal death. Research shows that burnout and emotional exhaustion, both caused by difficult or traumatic events in the workplace, affect a person’s ability to focus, attention to detail, and overall motivation, which has implications for clinical outcomes for a provider’s future patients. We are starting to see already that often, coping with these events is left to the devices of the providers affected, meaning that largely providers are tasked with understanding what they need in those moments and acting on them accordingly in order to do what they need to continue their practice the next day. There seems to be a prevalent feeling that coping is something you learn to do with experience. But what happens in the event that the first experience feels unmanageable? What would it look like if providers knew what resources were available, had used them before, or had been trained in how to figure out what is best for them? How would this idea about assumed self-sufficiency change in medical workplace culture if providers had these resources, were trained on how to use them, and were encouraged to reflect on their needs in these events?
I think the best advice I’ve ever gotten in my role as a birth doula was that for every one person you help or support, you need two to support you. The needs of those in helping and healing professions I think commonly get overseen due to the belief that their profession is fulfilling and rewarding on its own, and that only “strong” personalities, or those that can handle really tough situations with ease, go into this work anyways. The truth is that many seek professions in being healers because they have an incredible amount of empathy and compassion, which can come from past difficult or traumatic experiences of their own. These are the people most at risk for detrimental impacts on their mental health in the case of a bad patient outcome.
We don’t need community as a just-in-case fallback solution or as a social dynamic in our lives (although it does fill this purpose well), but as I have seen in my research and my own experiences, it can mean a matter of life or death for many.
I am excited to see where this research is taken in the future, especially in evaluating our expectations of health care workers mid-crisis. As we’ve seen, the pandemic has affected physicians and other health care workers in ways beyond physically contracting the virus, working longer, more intense shifts, and being witness to devastating outcomes for their patients. For now, I am seeing how this work has sparked a lot of important conversations that will hopefully lead to impactful changes. (I promise I didn’t mean for this to be this long but writing felt really good today. Taking advantage of this when it comes).
Yours,
Anna Stabnick