WINDSOR, ONT. -- A free webinar has been designed to help healthcare workers manage the stresses of the pandemic and offer coping strategies to support their mental health.
Homewood Health is putting on the webinars which will be offered in English and French starting Tuesday to support healthcare providers and workers across Canada.
“Certain things that are impacting health care workers and front line health care workers that are different or more exacerbated than the average person,” Sean Slater, vice president of market at Homewood Health, said.
Participants will have an opportunity to focus on different feelings that make be causing them stress along with topics such as trauma burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury.
“Who has access to a ventilator and who doesn’t, now that we’re getting into vaccinations and who doesn’t, you realize you’re helping somebody and putting somebody else behind them in line, that is counter to the reason that most people have entered the health care profession,” Slater said.
Nurses at Windsor Regional Hospital told CTV News their day-to-day experiences can take its toll.
“We’re doing more shifts here, we’re taking care of more people, it doesn’t really feel like it ends, you get a little bit of a break when you go home, but then you come right back in and do the same thing over again,” Michelena Sockett, an ICU nurse at WRH said.
They say talking with each other, eating right and getting outside for fresh air can help, but often times the stress doesn’t stay at work.
“We are real people and we have families we take the stress home with us, to a certain degree and unfortunately our families have to deal with that stress but it does come home with us, once we leave here it does not just stay here, I wish it did most days,” said WRH nurse Jen Hurst.
The virtual webinar will offer a look at mental health supports, along with coping strategies for healthcare workers to safeguard their mental health, during and beyond the pandemic.
The webinars will be held online starting on Tuesday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. for those in eastern Canada, other times are available in French and for the west coast.
Those interested can register for the sessions online
- With files from CTV Windsor's Michelle Maluske