When Healthcare Hurts: Strategies for Coping with Medical Trauma
Medical care is supposed to help us feel better. But for some people, the healthcare system itself can become a source of fear, frustration, loss of control, or trauma.
Medical trauma can develop after a frightening procedure, a serious diagnosis, a prolonged hospitalization, repeated medical interventions, or experiences of feeling dismissed or unheard. It can also accumulate over time. Especially for people living with complex, rare, chronic, or poorly understood illnesses, years of appointments, tests, uncertainty, and interactions with multiple providers can take an emotional and physical toll.
It is important to remember that the same medical experience will not affect everyone in the same way. An event may be stressful for one person and traumatic for another. Trauma is about the person's experience—not simply what happened or what someone intended.
Advance Care Planning: Know Your Options
During a period of critical illness many patients are unable to speak for themselves, and their next-of-kin is often called upon to help make decisions about the best care for them. In such cases, patient’s families often find it helpful when a patient has made an advance directive detailing what kind of treatment they would want if they were unlikely to recover certain levels of mental or physical functioning. You can take steps today to start (or continue!) this important conversation.
Ethical Decision-Making in Complicated Times
The world has gotten pretty complicated. No matter your work or home life, you are likely at least occasionally to encounter an ethical dilemma. Ethics are the moral standards by which we live our lives and are informed by factors such as our family, culture, education, and spiritual beliefs. An ethical dilemma is created when you are confronted with a choice between two or more actions, and any course you take is likely to be in conflict with a personal belief.
Stressed? How to Stay Calm in Tough Times
Your heart is pounding, your breathing feels fast and shallow, your stomach is in knots, and your racing thoughts just won’t slow down. Are you giving a big speech, running from a bear, or just trying to make it through a normal work day? The difficulty is - your physiology might react in similar ways to each of these events! Keep reading to learn why and to learn how to combat these automatic responses.
Hospice & Palliative Care: Know Your Options
If you’re caring for an aging relative or coping with a serious illness, a healthcare provider might one day ask you to consider palliative care or hospice services. This can be confusing as many patients and families aren’t aware that there are palliative care options that aren’t hospice. It also can be scary to hear these words, as they often are associated with end-of-life care. However, connecting with the right services at the right time is key for patient quality of life and caregiver support.
Am I Experiencing Moral Distress?
Most of us have felt it – that heart-racing, palm-sweating, face-flushing response to witnessing an action that goes against everything we believe in – in the moment before we decide whether to speak up. In the best case scenario, we can use these feelings to act and make changes. When we can’t or don’t act though, our internal suffering is called moral distress.