Promoting self care for trauma awareness: a piloted teaching module for beginning generalist practice

ABSTRACT

Education in self care is a core focus for beginning generalist social work trainees to boost trauma awareness, or the ability to recognize and respond to emotional responses from direct practice with clients with a history of trauma, and oppression,as well as for diminishing worker burnout. This paper presents a description and assessment of an asynchronous teaching module comprised of a video lecture, quiz and assignment piloted with beginning graduate-level social work students in the United States to situate self care as a component of professional development toward trauma-informed and ethical care. The module aimed to translate knowledge and skills in self care directly to practice and framed targets of self care including emotional regulation, and meaning-making. It provided students opportunities to identify self care practices at the individual level on their own, as well as agency-based self care practices in consultation with their field supervisors. The module was piloted with 57 master’s students enrolled in beginning generalist practice courses and the outcomes of a survey and thematic analysis suggests it warrants consideration as a tool for promoting competency regarding self care in an asynchronous, easily transportable format for online or hybrid learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Self care
• Trauma awareness
• Generalist practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the SAMHSA.

Notes on contributors

Sara Bressi

Sara Bressi is an Associate Professor at Bryn Mawr College, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Dr. Bressi teaches courses in generalist practice, clinical social work, and theory of human behavior.