TRAINING ON THE TOPIC: MENTAL HEALTH AND COMMUNICATION FOR MEDICAL SPECIALISTS
Professional stress is one of the biggest problems of modern society. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines it as the “disease of the 21st century”. The number of those who work in healthcare and suffer from “burnout” is ever increasing and nobody works on the topic in our country. Recently, we observe an increase of professional burnout of young doctors, including students in medical universities. “Astra Forum” Foundation underlines that care after young professionals’ mental health creates prerequisites for improved quality of healthcare after patients. Thus, thanks to our initiatives, we not only support medical experts in coping with stress, but also contribute for improving their work’s quality that has positive effect on patients’ health.
Namely that is why “Astra Forum” Foundation for more than a year has been directing its efforts towards coping with this significant problem via initiatives in several directions.
On the 23rd – 24th of February 2024 “Astra Forum” foundation arranged a tuition for medical specialists aimed at the topic for improving their mental health and effective communication with patients and colleagues. It was joined by the doctors who are ambassadors of the cause with whom the Foundation has been working for already almost a year, as well as health specialists that are interested in the topic, including students of medicine. What unites them is their attitude towards the topic and their desire to improve the work environment so that it does not harm the health of those who work in it. We managed to exchange ideas for initiative’s development.
The event started with opening and welcoming words by the chairman of the Foundation – Momchil Baev, doctor of medicine. He thanked everyone that they found a reason and travelled the distances from various points in the country in order to meet and share these days and experiences together.
The “get-to-know” session was the first for the day. During it each and everyone of these had the opportunity to present two things about him- or herself from personal and two – from professional point of view. Also, they shared what is good mental health to them and what they do to keep its good status.
Thus, the lecturers in the hall “melted the ice” between themselves and managed to very quickly find cross points with everyone else. Once again it was proven that people who share one and the same point of view on particular topic find each other.
During the second session, with host Lyudmila Paneva, the participants had the opportunity to review the communication and its impact. Lucy managed to prove them how through words they use could influence their relatives, friends, colleagues. Sometimes it is not important only what you say, but how you present it to your collocutors. Also, she demonstrated them that one should first change him- or herself and then try to do it with the others. Via short questionnaire everyone defined his own communication style – analytical, action, friendly or expressive.
After the enchanting session on communication towards oneself, we continued the day and the program with Mariana Petrova. The topic about issues and solutions in mental health and quality of life of medical specialists, gave the floor to the participants. During the session, the medical specialists had the opportunity to talk about mental health and communication on the topic in their community. They worked together while creating “Tree of problems and solutions” and each and every of them in advance wrote down what were the difficulties and hindrances in communication with his colleagues on this topic, and then what could be the solutions for improvement. All the points of view were discussed and grouped in individual categories that were created and united by the participants themselves. This way, we demonstrated the homogeneity of difficulties of everyone, irrespective that they have different majors, from various healthcare institutions and towns. The main groups of problems that were shaped up were:
Toxic work environment
Neglect of the topic about quality of life and mental health of doctors
Shame and stigma concerning the topic of mental health
Otther exogenous factors
The main groups of the possible solutions that were outlined:
Improvement of work environment.
Presence and dissemination of information.
Creation of policies at institutional level.
Change of environment thanks to personal example.
Thus the first training course day ended.
On the second day, we held session with Teodora Milotinova, a psychotherapist, member of the Bulgarian Association of Psychotherapy. She manages to make the group dive in the depths of psychotherapy, communication and self-knowledge. She predisposed the participants and they shared sincerely some of their day-to-day problems. Within the session, the doctors researched the difficulties at the workplace, how they cope with them, how to observe themselves, their colleagues and patients in order to understand them better. Each and every of them expressed positive feedback from the session itself, as well as the event in general.
We all left with the sensation for well-spent days, shared emotions, thoughts and feelings. Nevertheless the prevailing feelings were inspiration and hopefulness that change in medicine is possible. We promised each other similar meetings because we all need these… we need to know that someone who feels, thinks and experiences such things from professional and personal point of view… faces similar difficulties yet there is always a solution.
“Astra Forum” Foundation continues its sustainable development on the topic “human resources in healthcare, improvement of mental health of medical specialists and quality of life”. Twice a month a group is held with the leading psychotherapist Teodora Milotinova. The group is open for health specialists that would like to joint it. It is held twice a month, on Friday from 18:00 – 20:00 p.m. in the centre of the city of Sofia. The fee is symbolic – 20 BGN per session, and the other part would be borne by the Foundation. Should you need more information, you could contact us at email: support@astraforumfoundation.org.
The event was attended by participants that have been part of the group already and the positive feedback that they shared was impressive for all the attendees.
The emotional story about the event through the eyes of both participants you could read HERE.
