Interdisciplinary Team (IDT)

(SA06) Soul Care Spaces in PALTC: The Missing Ingredient to Staff Support

Saturday, March 9, 2024

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM CT

Room: 304

CME: (1) MOC: (1) CMD Management: (1) NP Pharmacology Hours ()

Session Chair/Speaker(s)

Alexandra M. Donovan, MFA, Board Certified Chaplain (she/her/hers)

Associate Director, Employee Well-Being & Spiritual Health
Optum Health
Fort Collins, CO

Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose.

Disclosure(s):

Alexandra M. Donovan, MFA; Board Certified Chaplain: No financial relationships to disclose.

We’ll review the 6 workplace drivers of burnout according to Dr. Christina Maslach and explore how spiritual care for staff can positively mitigate at least 3 of those main drivers. We’ll share ways to integrate spiritual care for teams and individuals into existing workflow so that staff can benefit from “morally safe spaces” and meaningful practices without adding too much to busy schedules. We’ll also address ways to ensure that the provision of spiritual care is open and inviting to people of all and no faith backgrounds. We are using the term “spiritual care” in this session to mean opportunities for clinicians to name things like grief and moral distress and to experience belonging, solidarity, and connections to their own sources of meaning (whatever those are). Participants will experience tools for integration and “soul care” that they might consider adopting into their personal practices or broader team cultures.

Learning Objectives:

At the completion of this session, learners will be able to:

Name the 6 major drivers of burnout and the role that spiritual care can play in addressing them for staff teams.
Assess the existence of and need for “morally safe space” for judgement-free (psychologically safe) connection-building debrief spaces in their own healthcare settings.
Identify rituals that are already part of their personal practice or that they intend to incorporate into their practice to help with the emotional integration of both emotionally heavy experiences and spiritually rewarding encounters.