DOMAIN 4: SECONDARY TRAUMATIC STRESS–INFORMED LEADERSHIP
Item 5
Strategies for Leaders:
- Continue to be aware of how you are being impacted by the trauma work of the organization and by your role as a leader. You need to have an awareness of how this work impacts you and be actively working to develop practices to promote your own health and well-being. Otherwise, it will be difficult to help your staff and MDT partners engage in developing practices to address their secondary trauma exposure. Leaders need to be self-aware, reflective, and emotionally regulated themselves in order to serve as a positive role model for staff.
- Assess current levels of STS at any given time by utilizing a formal assessment tool. See links below.
- “Take a pulse” of how you are doing in a less formal way and reflect on what situations, people, and/or experiences may be trauma reminders for you. This could include checking in with yourself throughout the day as to how you are feeling, do a body scan to draw attention to any areas of tension, etc.
- Recognize how culture, race, identities, lived experiences, systemic oppression, and/or implicit bias may affect your own experiences of STS.
Implementation Resources:
Assessments
- Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale, a 21-item measure of STS with subscales for intrusion, avoidance, arousal, and negative alterations in cognition and mood.6
- Self-scoring electronic version of the scale is available here.
- Professional Quality of Life Scale (proQOL), a 30-item measure with subscales for compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress.
Select Action Plan to begin to organize and implement next steps.