Into the Field of Suffering: Finding the Other Side of Burnout

by David Schenck, Scott Neely

Overview

Healthcare providers are constantly confronted with illness and injury, and the challenges of healing. Yet this very work, the relief of suffering, inflicts on healthcare providers suffering of their own that is often crippling. The most common terms for the pain caregivers and healers suffer from are burnout and moral distress. These common terms are, however, often used judgmentally--as if those trying to heal others have failed themselves, their colleagues, and their patients. The net result is that much discussion of burnout and moral distress, and the interventions they underwrite, have served only to worsen the crisis. Into the Field of Suffering: Finding the Other Side of Burnout provides a much-needed reframing of burnout and moral distress. These depleting experiences are approached as trials virtually inevitable in the course of the healer's vocation. The challenge medical professionals and caregivers face is not avoiding them, but meeting them directly with insight into the role of moral distress and burnout in the development of their vocation. Into the Field of Suffering presents a set of analytical frameworks and awareness skills, which have the potential to transform the work of healers and caregivers. There is a growing body of academic literature on these topics, and many memoirs recounting distressing situations and wounding traumas. Into the Field of Suffering takes its place alongside these works, while offering a distinctly different approach that treats as essential the spiritual dimension of the healing vocation. Practices, teachings and dialogues to assist in the cultivation of compassion and gratitude are key components in this presentation. Schenck and Neely address their readers in a direct voice, speaking to the sense of failure and discouragement so many healthcare professionals and caregivers experience on a daily basis. This is a book that carries a mentor's voice and presence, born out of experience with burnout and moral distress, and grounded in hundreds of conversations, de-briefings and interviews with healthcare workers and caregivers, patients and families.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197666753
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/17/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	814 KB

About the Author

David Schenck is the former Director of the Ethics Program, Medical University of South Carolina, and was on the faculty of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is co-author of two books that approach ethics and healing in healthcare from an empirical perspective, Healers: Extraordinary Clinicians at Work (Oxford, 2015) and What Patients Teach: Everyday Ethics of Healthcare (Oxford, 2013). Schenck taught philosophy and religion for 20 years and has published widely in bioethics, philosophy, and religious studies. He was founding executive director of a free medical clinic, healthcare advocate for the homeless, and a 25-year hospice volunteer. Scott Neely is minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, South Carolina. He serves as strategist for Speaking Down Barriers, an organization that uses art and facilitated dialogue to build our life together across differences that divide us. He has helped develop LGBTQ Theologies--a network of congregations supporting LGBTQ+ people and issues in Upstate South Carolina, and the Fund to Support Latinx Immigrants--a state-wide coalition providing direct assistance to immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, he has taught at the University of South Carolina-Upstate and Wofford College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments A Note on Sources and Method Invitation: For You Who Do This Work Part I. Vocation as Path Chapter 1. The Healing Vocation Chapter 2. On Depletion and Burnout: Reframing the Darkness Chapter 3. How Breakthrough Happens: The Mutuality of Healing Chapter 4. The Practice of Replenishment and Renewal: Core Exercises Chapter 5. In Conclusion: On Healing Presence and Gratitude Part II. The Dialogues: Deepening Capacity Dialogue 1. Honing the Exercises Dialogue 2. The Exercises as Spiritual Disciplines Dialogue 3. The Essential Skill of Advocacy Dialogue 4. The Field of Suffering Is the Field of Healing Dialogue 5. The Fulcrum and the Great Compassion Appendix: A Practice Calendar References Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a useful tool for those starting their careers in medicine who are looking for anticipatory guidance in how to navigate the tumultuous waters of a decades-long career surrounded by suffering. It is a quick read, though not easy. It is moving, challenging, and thought-provoking. It reframes things in a way that feels more authentic than the common 'prevent burnout with wellness workshops' mentality. For those near the world's most suffering (ICU, hospice, palliative care, PICU), this book may be a welcome friend on their journey." — Duncan L Campbell, M.D.(The Ohio State University)

From the Publisher

Reviewer: Duncan L Campbell, M.D.(The Ohio State University)
Description: The book begins with an invitation to those in the medical field to reframe and enter into the conversation on burnout in medicine. It is part description of the current state of play, part reflection on how medicine arrived here, and part handbook on navigating how the field moves forward. It is a conversational collection of stories interwoven with guidelines on how to turn depletion into gratitude.
Purpose: The authors' purpose is to put forward a path that can lead through depletion and burnout, to gratitude and replenishment. In a post-pandemic medical field plagued by technological "advancements" and rising rates of disenchantment in healthcare workers, this is a worthy purpose indeed. The authors accomplish their goal with personal and moving anecdotes as well as realistic, manageable recommended steps to take.
Audience: The authors address this book to those who provide care to the sick, suffering and dying - especially practitioners in intensive care and palliative care fields. Through individual experiences and firsthand accounts, they effectively counsel providers on the path through burnout. Based on their research in the area, and vulnerable firsthand experience that they share, they are credible authorities on the subject matter of this book.
Features: By outlining a path of the healing vocation (Call, Formation, Mastery, Depletion and Burnout, Breakthrough, Replenishment and Renewal), the authors focus in on the largely inevitable depletion in any healthcare career. Rather than focusing on preventing this, as is so often the case, they instead reframe burnout as a stage to pass through. They assert, perhaps not convincingly, that more presence to suffering, and more attention to the personal can transform depletion into meaning. This path may not be appealing to the faint of heart. The concluding section of the book is a collection of dialogues between the authors. They explore conversationally more of the particulars: setting up physical space, institutional challenges, advocating for oneself and others. This section is less objective and less broadly applicable.
Assessment: This book is a useful tool for those starting their careers in medicine who are looking for anticipatory guidance in how to navigate the tumultuous waters of a decades-long career surrounded by suffering. It is a quick read, though not easy. It is moving, challenging, and thought-provoking. It reframes things in a way that feels more authentic than the common "prevent burnout with wellness workshops" mentality. For those near the world's most suffering (ICU, hospice, palliative care, PICU), this book may be a welcome friend on their journey. It would be a practical supplement to books like The Healer's Calling: A Spirituality for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals, Sulmasy (Paulist Press, 1997).

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