A One DayRetreat for Professional Health Caregivers
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles
Retreat Coverage and Press
American Nurse Today
Helping caregivers cope with death
By Catherine Klatzker, RN
A one-day retreat called Mindfulness, Meditation, and Coping with Death helps healthcare professionals deal with patients' deaths.
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles
FloSheet
Mary Dee Hacker RN, MBSA
Vice President, Patient Care Services & Chief Nursing Officer
Then there are times when intuition leads to innovation. Catherine Klatzker and the PICU team took a leadership role by creating for nurses a retreat from the emotional work of their daily profession. These retreats are now the model for a hospital-wide endeavor to help our caregivers care for themselves so they may remain strong for their patients.
Imagine
Retreats Remedy Compassion Fatigue
As one of only two Level I Pediatric Trauma Centers in Los Angeles County, CHLA treats the sickest, most seriously injured children, and working with these children and their families can take an emotional, physical and spiritual toll, particularly on the staff in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). There were 82 deaths among the 1,100 severely and terminally ill patients the nurses cared for in the unit last year, and it would be impossible not to be affected by grief and loss.
"Eighty-percent of all deaths in pediatric hospitals happen in ICUs," says Catherine Klatzker, RN, citing national statistics. However, she adds, many Professional Health Caregivers don't receive the proper training to help prepare them emotionally for such experiences.
To help caregivers cope with "compassion fatigue," the PICU Committee on Family Centered Care created a one-day retreat designed to help doctors, nurses and others take care of themselves while caring for their extraordinarily sick patients.
Led by a meditation and psychotherapy expert, the retreat offers coping strategies, such as experiential exercises and meditation and relaxation techniques, to deal with end-of-life issues It gives participants a forum to share their bereavement experiences.
The idea came to Klatzker last year after she attended a bereavement workshop for healthcare professionals. Klatzker, who chairs the PICU committee, shared what she learned with the group and says, "Everyone agreed we needed to do this here."
Teri Loera, RN, BSN, CNA, Operations Manager, a PICU veteran of 20 years, was one of 30 participants in the first retreat. "We have incredibly sad stories (in the PICU) where, despite our best efforts, we have patients that don't survive. We give our hearts and souls in caring for our patients and the number of deaths we experience really takes its toll.
"The retreat bonded us in the knowledge of our common experiences in losing patients," Loera says, adding, "It was comforting to know that others feel the same way."
Though originally intended for the staff in the PICU, caregivers from other departments at CHLA participated in the retreats. Klatzker says there are plans to expand the program to other parts of the hospital.