20 Quick Strategies to Help Patients and Clients Manage Stress

By Charlene Richard

Fast, effective strategies — each teachable in 10 minutes or less!

Includes printable patient handouts and audio downloads for guided relaxation practices.

Empower your patients quickly with tools that range from relaxation strategies to life skills. Teach patients to recognize their stress response and use proven techniques to reduce their exposure to stress. Each of the 20 strategies described in this practical guide includes a script to teach patients how to use the strategy and a printable patient handout. Patients can use the audio downloads at home or right in your office.

Whether you are a health care professional, social worker, or student in a health care program, this book will provide you with strategies you can use to help patients immediately. These methods work. All have been used in a variety of settings, including primary care and community health clinics, mental health centers, addiction treatment facilities, community counseling agencies, domestic violence shelters, and secondary and post-secondary health centers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brush Education
• Release date: Jan 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781550596519

Charlene Richard

Charlene Richard, MSW, RSW is currently working as a behavioural health consultant with Alberta Health Service within the Calgary Foothills Primary Care Network. She has been working in addictions and mental health since 2004 and was a mental health consultant for Health Canada. As a speaker and facilitator she has provided numerous workshops to community, provincial and federal organizations. Most recently, Charlene has developed and implemented a Skill Based Stress Management program in Primary Care through the Calgary Foothills Primary Care Network. She writes about stress management at www.charlenerichardrsw.com

Book preview

20 Quick Strategies to Help Patients

and Clients Manage Stress

20 Quick Strategies to Help Patients

and Clients Manage Stress

CHARLENE RICHARD, B.S.W., M.S.W., RSW

Copyright © 2015 Charlene Richard

15 16 17 18 19 5 4 3 2 1

Thank you for buying this book and for not copying, scanning, or distributing any part of it without permission. By respecting the spirit as well as the letter of copyright, you support authors and publishers, allowing them to continue to create and distribute the books you value.

Excerpts from this publication may be reproduced under license from Access Copyright, or with the express written permission of Brush Education Inc., or under license from a collective management organization in your territory. All rights are otherwise reserved, and no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, digital copying, scanning, recording, or otherwise, except as specifically authorized.

Printed and manufactured in Canada

Brush Education Inc.

www.brusheducation.ca

[e-mail]

Cover design: Dean Pickup; Cover images: top left: Tyler Olson, Dreamstime.com; top right: Wavebreakmedia, Dreamstime.com; bottom: Wavebreakmedia, Shutterstock.com

Interior design: Carol Dragich, Dragich Design

Editorial: Leslie Vermeer, Shauna Babiuk

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Richard, Charlene, author

20 quick strategies to help patients and clients manage stress / Charlene Richard, B.S.W., M.S.W.

Includes bibliographical references.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55059-648-9 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-55059-649-6 (pdf).—

ISBN 978-1-55059-650-2 (mobi).--ISBN 978-1-55059-651-9 (epub)

1. Stress management. I. Title. II. Title: Twenty quick strategies to help patients and clients manage stress.

RA785.R49 2015              155.9’042            C2015-905435-4

                                                                    C2015-905436-2

Dedicated to the memory of Allan Prokopow,

who was my biggest cheerleader for this book.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

1 Stress and Your Patients

2 Awareness Strategies

3 Self-Management Strategies

4 Relaxation Strategies

5 Sensory Grounding Strategies

6 Cognitive Strategies

7 Clinician Wellness

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

Summary: How to Use This Book

Strategy #1: Human Stress Response and Warning Signs

Strategy #2: Daily Stress Log

Strategy #3: Stress Thermometer

Strategy #4: Stress-Management Plan and Resources

Strategy #5: My Stress-Management Goal

Strategy #6: Self-Care Plan: Lifestyle Factors for Stress Management

Strategy #7: My Support Map

Strategy #8: Deep Breathing: Technique

Strategy #9: Deep Breathing: Extended Exhale

Strategy #10: Deep Breathing: Boxed Breathing

Strategy #11: Guided Visualization

Strategy #12: Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Strategy #13: 5–4–3–2–1 Sensory Grounding Exercise

Strategy #14: Pictures on the Wall Exercise

Strategy #15: Cognitive-Awareness Grounding Strategy

Strategy #16: Journaling and Relaxation

Strategy #17: Gratitude Lists and Journaling

Strategy #18: Surfing Your Stress

Strategy #19: Awareness of Negative Thoughts

Strategy #20: Setting Boundaries and Saying No

Signs and Symptoms of Compassion Fatigue

Ten Nourishing Activities for Clinician Wellness

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Foreword

"I have so many patients sitting in my exam rooms with

high stress, but I don’t know where to start. And I have

so little time and few tools to give them other than

medication." – Dr. Almost All Physicians

If you can relate to the quote above, then this practical, step-by-step book written for family physicians and their allied staff is for you.

As a professional working in primary care, I understand the dilemma physicians face with needing to see people for brief sessions, having few tools to help their patients with stress, and having few external resources to send their patients to because of long waitlists or expensive consultants. I lead a team of Behavioural Health Consultants in primary care and I have worked with Charlene Richard and I know of both her outstanding work with patients and the high positive regard held of her by the family physicians with whom she works and the team around her who value her expertise.

We know that stress has a profound impact on both the mental and physical health of patients presenting at the primary health care clinic. Moreover, we know the vast numbers of people presenting at the doctor’s office with negative stress. And we know that physicians both want and need resources to help their patients without resorting to providing only medication.

As stress and stress management are seemingly ubiquitous these days, one would think that most people must have good stress-management tools in their coping repertoire, but in real life — in family doctors’ offices everywhere — that is far from the truth.

Charlene has written an outstanding book for physicians and their allied health team that gives clinicians all the tools they and their colleagues need to provide the help for patients to cope more effectively with their stress. She addresses four main areas that will benefit a professional working in the family practice:

1. a common-sense, down-to-earth framework based on current science and practice that physicians can use to develop a shared understanding of stress, its impact on the body and the mind, and the tools to better manage it

2. brief scripts to explain stress and stress-management tools written for the clinician to use with patients that are comforting, use common language, and are easy to implement and personalize to an individual practice and community

3. specific and practical tools for patients that cover the entire range of factors pertinent in current stress management

4. handouts and recordings the clinician can pass on to patients to practice and utilize in their life at home and work

In this book, Charlene touches on the exact points needed to give patients the strategies and tools to manage their stress in an effective manner. She covers the core topics needed in any stress-management program but does it in such an accessible manner that all busy physicians could appreciate. As patients quickly reach for a Band-Aid® after a cut or abrasion, they can use these tools to quickly reach for their Psychological Band-Aid® when facing stress.

This book provides a final section on clinician self-care. Stress-management tools for the stressed physician is an outstanding resource that should help clinicians go home at the end of each day in the clinic with a refreshed outlook on their practice and their life. And in the busy world of family practice, who wouldn’t relish that?

This book could be a practice-improvement strategy onto itself helping the often overworked and busy family practice help their patients cope more effectively with stress to improve their health and well-being.

Bob Acton, Ph.D., R.Psych.

Clinical Psychologist and Co-Lead,

Behavioural Health Consultation Service

Shared Mental Health Care

Alberta Health Services

Calgary, Alberta

Acknowledgments

I am forever grateful for the following:

All my patients and clients who have taught me more about human behavior, resiliency, hope, strength, spirit, determination, dreams, and survival than I ever could have learned in an academic environment.

My clinical supervisor in graduate school, Dave MacKay, who taught, guided, supported, and laughed with me as I learned how to do this thing called therapy. I often hear his words of wisdom in my head as I’m working with patients.

My clinical supervisor at Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, Addiction and Mental Health Services, Caroline Elson, who taught me the finesse of working with people who were overcoming more hardships than any human should have to bear. She helped me help them while taking care of my own health.

The amazing team at Alberta Health Services, Shared Mental Health Care, Bob Acton, Dennis Pusch, and Paul Ragusa, who took a chance on hiring me and had faith that I could move across the country within three weeks to begin my work with them. Also, the Calgary Foothills Primary Care Network, who gave me the chance to work within a highly skilled and caring team of multidisciplinary health care professionals — particularly my manager, Allan Prokopow, who gave me the opportunity to introduce the stress-management program in primary care and was more excited than anyone else about the creation of this book.

Through my work with Alberta Health Services, I met the wonderful team at Brush Education Inc., including Fraser Seely, Lauri Seidlitz, and Leslie Vermeer, who guided me through the process of publishing a book for the first time. It’s been an (almost) stress-free experience.

And, of course, my family and friends, who have provided me with unwavering support, personally and professionally, as I have entered and navigated this role of mental health clinician. At times, I required much support from them and was a bit difficult to be around when working through my own stress and burnout. Thank you all.

Introduction

Once I moved into primary care as a mental health clinician, I began to work with a very close interdisciplinary team. I found myself working with dietitians, health management nurses, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, diabetes educators, social workers, and physicians. It was great to be able to connect patients with the clinicians who could be of the most help to them, depending on what health concerns they were addressing.

As a mental health clinician, whether I was a mental health therapist or a behavioral health consultant, a large part of my role was to help patients learn healthy coping strategies for managing stress. I initially did this through individual