Resilience and Self-care Strategies in Aged Care
Written by Lilly Sorensen, Sector Support Administrator
In-home aged care work is a high-pressure environment with increasing demands, meanwhile, workers must continue to deliver high-quality care with compassion and empathy. Home care workers are required to navigate unpredictable work environments and face the additional challenge of working in isolation away from direct supervision. Protective strategies such as resilience training can support worker wellbeing, which research shows, is linked to delivering higher quality of care.
In response to requests from local aged care providers, Sector Support held multiple sessions focussing on self-care, resilience, personal boundaries, dealing with overwhelm and a multitude of strategies that could be directly applied to daily work practices. Sessions were hosted by Clare Edwards from BrainSmart – attendees shared some of their key learnings below.
Know your sphere of influence
Boundaries and knowing your areas of influence, means understanding what we can control, and what we can’t control. Our attention, time and energy are limited – knowing where not to focus our energy is just as important as knowing where to focus.
Write down all the concerns you are currently facing in relation to a particular challenge. Sort these items into ‘I can control’, ‘within my influence’ or ‘outside of my control’. Next, reflect on where you spend most of your time and energy. If it’s in the ‘cannot control’ section, practice letting go. When we expend energy and time in areas that we cannot influence in any way, this is what leads to us experiencing stress.
Morning Rituals
How we start the day can make a significant difference to how we get through the ups and downs. Routines and rituals such as prayer, meditation, gratitude practice, exposure to natural morning sunlight and exercise can add predictability and reduce the cognitive load on the executive functions of our brains.
Maintaining Personal Boundaries
CEOs may find it hard to say no to certain requests, but if you set up a ‘personal policy’ it creates a firm boundary so you’re not just relying on discipline alone. Personal policies may apply to meeting availability, accessibility while on leave, commitments to personal appointments.
Building and maintaining your support network
Be intentional with your social connections. We might react to stressful situations by withdrawing, yet, your social support network is the foundation of resilience. Build a strong foundation of support around you.
Discover the Third Space (video)
The third space is the space where you transition between the first space to the second. For example from work to home, the first space being work, second being home and the third space being the time in between. The third space allows you to re-centre and recalibrate, between meetings or client visits, so that you can step into the next meeting or interaction with clarity and purpose.
Moving from Reacting to Responding.
Echoing the sphere of influence concept, when we respond to challenges in a responsive way, rather than a reactive way, we’re able to respond to challenges with greater resilience. Being able to stop ourselves from reacting, and instead, responding with intention, lowers our stress and increases our resilience over time.
In summary, in times of high pressure, we can sometimes forget to prioritise our self-care. It’s so easy to say we’re ‘too busy’ for self-care and resilience strategies, yet, paradoxically, this is when we would benefit most.
To receive the latest Sector Support updates including event invitations, please subscribe to our e-bulletin here.