{"id":26703,"date":"2023-07-14T15:57:26","date_gmt":"2023-07-14T19:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=26703"},"modified":"2023-07-18T08:38:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T12:38:32","slug":"mscem-students-get-training-in-mental-health-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/mscem-students-get-training-in-mental-health-resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"Community engaged medicine students learn lessons in resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before joining the the Greenville Free Medical Clinic<\/a> (GFMC) as a behavioral health counselor, Johanna Ott Gimpel worked at an inpatient psychiatric hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a therapist trying to save lives, and I got thrown into the COVID unit as well,\u201d said Ott Gimpel during a seminar on July 14 about mental health resilience hosted by The Institute for the Advancement of Community Health (IACH<\/a>). \u201cI was working from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., no bathroom breaks, no one asking how I\u2019m doing. I knew the hospital was in a crisis, but I didn\u2019t know how bad of a crisis I was in as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helping health care workers bounce back from burnout, exhaustion, compassion fatigue and other common mental health issues was the goal of the seminar, based on a program developed in New York City to help frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic. GFMC is making the free training sessions available to other organizations throughout the Greenville, South Carolina, area.<\/p>\n

Strategies for self-care and coping<\/h3>\n

More than 50 people attended the workshop in the Trone Student Center, including the 25 Furman graduate students in the Master of Science in Community Engaged Medicine (MSCEM<\/a>) program and several Furman faculty members.<\/p>\n

\"\"

More than 50 people, including students in Furman\u2019s Master of Science in Community Engaged Medicine program and representatives of several community organizations, attended a resilience training seminar July 14, 2023, in the Trone Student Center.<\/p><\/div>\n

IACH also welcomed representatives from their partner community organizations, including Prisma Health, Bon Secours St. Francis, Gateway, Project Hope and 864Pride.<\/p>\n

Defining resilience as \u201ca combination of support and care from outside and within, plus positive coping skills,\u201d Ott Gimpel presented several evidence-based strategies for self-care and coping, including stress management techniques, regular sleep, healthy eating and a \u201cbuddy system,\u201d in which health care workers regularly check in on each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to be comfortable to ask, \u2018Are you OK? How are you doing?\u2019 \u2013 That should be the norm,\u201d she said. \u201cBut somehow we\u2019ve gotten away from that, because we\u2019re so consumed with everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharing knowledge<\/h3>\n

She also shared a \u201cfeelings wheel<\/a>,\u201d a tool to help zero in on the\u00a0awareness of emotions from broad (\u201csad\u201d) to specific (\u201cgrief\u201d or \u201cinferior\u201d or \u201cpowerless\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we get the verbiage, it\u2019s so much easier to identify and explain what we\u2019re feeling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Having a representative from GFMC, one of the community partner organizations where MSCEM students conduct field work, fits well with the curriculum, said Rachael Bowers, director of MSCEM and interim executive director of IACH.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur partners are so key to engaged learning for the graduate students, consistent with The Furman Advantage<\/a>,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re elevating the professionals that contribute to education as well as sharing knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important for the students to receive training in mental health resilience as they prepare for their futures in the health care field, Bowers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want each cohort in the master\u2019s program to be able to be a support system for each other,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd they need to hear how that can continue into their engaged learning and their professional lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Be there for yourself and others\u2019<\/h3>\n

MSCEM student Tamia Cobb, a medical assistant from Rock Hill, South Carolina, plans to take Ott Gimpel\u2019s advice on avoiding compassion fatigue with her to medical school or a physician assistant program and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a lot of times in the medical field, people get burned out,\u201d she said. \u201cI can use compassion as a protective factor for myself and help my patients use self-care, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The training \u201creinforced that your mental health is important as you go through your daily life,\u201d said MSCEM student Mason Moore, a University of Mississippi graduate who plans to attend medical school. \u201cNot just be there for others, but really put some focus on yourself, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A seminar hosted by The Institute for the Advancement of Community Health helped the students and several community organizations learn strategies to avoid burnout after a crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":26705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,65,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-engaged-medicine","category-institute-for-the-advancement-of-community-health","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}