Access to and impact of psychological support for healthcare professionals working in palliative care settings.

Background: Palliative healthcare professionals’ wellbeing and the degree to which they experience themselves as stressed is an important part of quality care delivery and ensuring patients receive good compassionate care (Hospice UK, 2015). Caring for dying patients involves high levels of emotional engagement (Meier and Beresford, 2006) and repeated exposure to suffering and death (Peters et al, 2013). Healthcare professionals can find it difficult to balance compassionate care and self-care and need support to cope with the associated stress of caring in this environment, but little is known about psychological support availed by palliative healthcare professionals. Aims: To: (i) explore the impact of psychological support for healthcare professionals working in palliative care; (ii) identify helpful forms of psychological support alongside any potential barriers to accessing such support. Methods: Exploratory, qualitative research design. Semi-structured interviews and drawing (to enrich the narrative account), with a purposive sample of palliative healthcare professionals (n=16) from one hospice in West Yorkshire, England (February-May 2016). Ethical approval was granted. Data were analysed using framework approach of verbatim transcripts. Results: Four main themes emerged through data analysis (i) types of support (ii) coping strategies (iii) barriers/facilitators to accessing psychological support (iv) developing/maintaining resilience. Staff participated in various formal and informal psychosocial support and coping strategies to reduce their vulnerability. Several barriers and facilitators to accessing psychological support and ways of developing and strengthening their own personal resilience were identified. Discussion & Conclusion: Palliative healthcare professionals use a diverse portfolio of psychosocial support and coping strategies to promote their personal well-being. Having the opportunity to access psychological support during working hours is an important part of staff support strategies in the workplace. Managers have a key role in providing access to psychological support to help reduce vulnerability to and impact of stress in the workplace.