Open AccessCommunities of practice: acknowledging vulnerability to improve resilience in healthcare teams
Author(s) -
Janet Delgado,
de Groot J,
Graham McCaffrey,
Gina Dimitropoulos,
Kathleen C. Sitter,
Wendy Austin
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of medical ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.768
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1473-4257
pISSN - 0306-6800
DOI - 10.1136/medethics-2019-105865
Subject(s) - vulnerability (computing) , health care , burnout , psychology , work (physics) , psychological resilience , compassion fatigue , perspective (graphical) , compassion , resilience (materials science) , witness , engineering ethics , nursing , knowledge management , medicine , social psychology , political science , computer science , computer security , engineering , mechanical engineering , clinical psychology , physics , artificial intelligence , law , thermodynamics
The majority of healthcare professionals regularly witness fragility, suffering, pain and death in their professional lives. Such experiences may increase the risk of burnout and compassion fatigue, especially if they are without self-awareness and a healthy work environment. Acquiring a deeper understanding of vulnerability inherent to their professional work will be of crucial importance to face these risks. From a relational ethics perspective, the role of the team is critical in the development of professional values which can help to cope with the inherent vulnerability of healthcare professionals. The focus of this paper is the role of Communities of Practice as a source of resilience, since they can create a reflective space for recognising and sharing their experiences of vulnerability that arises as part of their work. This shared knowledge can be a source of strength while simultaneously increasing the confidence and resilience of the healthcare team.