Resilience to Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Vicarious Trauma

Time: 9:00am-4:00pm

Location: Virtual

Instructor: Ann Marie Roepke, Ph.D., Evoke Training and Consulting, PLLC

CE credits: 6 (pending)

Course Description:

Caring for others is a rewarding profession – and a demanding one. As providers in social services, behavioral health, or related “helping professions,” how can we prevent burnout and attend to our own well-being? Resilience-based approaches can help. In this 6-hour training, participants will explore strategies for fostering resilience and preventing burnout, including rediscovering meaning and purpose in our work, boosting positive emotions, building high-quality connections, bringing mindfulness into daily life, and identifying opportunities to advocate for environmental/systemic changes that address the root causes of burnout. Training participants will have the opportunity to learn in a variety of ways including lecture, demonstrations, discussions, and experiential learning activities designed to provide a richer understanding of strategies to foster resilience and prevent burnout in therapeutic, social service, and healthcare settings.

Learning objectives. At the end of this training participants will be able to:

1. Describe the three key components of burnout
2. Distinguish burnout from vicarious trauma
3. Explain three strategies for fostering resilience in the face of work-related stressors
4. Describe how to use a practical 4-step tool for fostering self-compassion
5. Identify at least one centering/grounding practice
6.  Assess how, where, and when resilience strategies could be usefully applied in the participant’s own professional setting

References:

Bell, C., Roberts, G. L., Millear, P. M., Allen, A., Wood, A. P., Kannis-Dymand, L., ... & Mason, J. (2024). The emotionally exhausted treating the mentally unwell? A systematic review of burnout and stress interventions for psychologists. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 31(1), e2909.

Cleary, E., Curran, D., Dyer, K., Simms, J., & Hanna, D. (2024). Contributing factors to secondary traumatic stress and vicarious posttraumatic growth in therapists. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 37(1), 103-112.

Duncan, S., & Pond, R. (2025). Effective burnout prevention strategies for counsellors and other therapists: a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 38(3), 526-555.

Henderson, A., Jewell, T., Huang, X., & Simpson, A. (2025). Personal trauma history and secondary traumatic stress in mental health professionals: A systematic review. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 32(1), 13-30.

Rushforth, A., Durk, M., Rothwell-Blake, G. A., Kirkman, A., Ng, F., & Kotera, Y. (2023). Self-compassion interventions to target secondary traumatic stress in healthcare workers: a systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(12), 6109.

Vivolo, M., Owen, J., & Fisher, P. (2024). Psychological therapists’ experiences of burnout: A qualitative systematic review and meta-synthesis. Mental Health & Prevention, 33, 200253.