Coping with Moral Distress: Helping our Clients Helping Ourselves

Coping with Moral Distress: Helping our Clients Helping Ourselves

Friday, August 26, 2022

Registration 8:30am Program 9am to 12pm

Presented By: Emily D. Browning, BA, M.Div., MSW

Location: Online Workshop

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

3 CE Credits

The complex issue of moral distress has been studied extensively in the medical and ethics literature over the last few decades and continues to evolve in its basic conceptualization and attention across other populations. This session will consider moral distress from ethical, clinical, and structural perspectives and offer participants a myriad of perspectives with which to consider their own opportunity to practice as change agents in their own settings. Moreover, we will address assessment and treatment strategies for use with clients who may be suffering with moral distress or moral injury and related symptoms of burnout.

Objectives:

1. Describe moral distress as a separate phenomenon from emotional distress.
2. Discuss major root causes of moral distress and moral injury.
3. Assess the potential impact of moral distress on various populations, especially those in health and mental health-related fields.
4. Compare strategies for addressing moral distress on personal, clinical, and systemic levels.

Emily Browning, M.Div., MSW, LCSW, ACHP-SW, CCTP is a clinical social worker and private practice owner in Philadelphia, PA, specializing in therapy services for professional and family caregivers and those coping with grief, loss, and serious illness. Until 2020, she was a Social Worker and the Clinical Coordinator for the Palliative Care Team at Temple University Hospital (TUH). While at TUH, Emily published research relating to healthcare workers and moral distress, developing a debriefing program for interprofessional staff and training as a Schwartz Rounds facilitator.

Emily holds a BA from the College of William & Mary in Virginia (2000), a Master’s of Divinity degree from the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (2005) and an MSW from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005), as well as receiving additional training in hospice and palliative care and trauma therapy. Emily began her career as a hospice and palliative care clinician in British Columbia, Canada, training with the Hospice of Victoria, BC, known for sentinel contributions to the literature on the provision of emotional and spiritual care at the end of life.

Emily has presented at conferences locally and nationally on uncertainty at the end of life, communication strategies for difficult conversations in medicine, secondary traumatic stress among health and mental healthcare workers, and reflective practice and debriefing as related to moral distress. Emily is a Zelda Foster Leadership Fellow in Palliative and End of Life Care through the NYU Silver School of Social Work and is a professional mentor in the Zelda Leadership and Post-Master’s Fellowship programs. In addition, she is an ordained minister with the American Baptist Church (ABC-USA).

PSCP: The Psychology Network is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PSCP: The Psychology network maintains responsibility for this program and its content.