Prioritising workforce wellbeing and resilience: What COVID-19 is reminding us about self-care and staff support

Abstract

The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily, and not be touched by it, is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet.1

While penned nearly two decades ago, the words of Remen1 are increasingly relevant to those providing palliative care. They remind us of the need for cognisance of potential impacts on personal wellbeing and professional capacity when working in contexts of cumulative loss and suffering. More recently, the physical and psychosocial suffering associated with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented operational and ethical challenges for palliative care providers, bringing workforce considerations into sharp focus.2 To maintain the provision of quality palliative care in the wake of such challenges, there is a clear need to prioritise wellbeing and resilience in the palliative care workforce. It has also been important to offer such opportunities to the broader health workforce who also have been plunged into a steep learning curve to provide palliative care, outside their usual scope of clinical practice. But whose responsibility is workforce wellbeing and resilience—the individual practitioner or the organisations in which they work?