Daily dependence on Holy Spirit gives fruit

I was able to have a Secondary Traumatic Stress handout from colleagues doing child fatality reviews. It mentions that because the toll of abused children are over 10 million, the people caring for them in the familial, social, pastoral and medical spheres will inevitably get to listen to trauma stories that will bring about PTSD-like responses and yield if not in some compassion fatigue but also possibly burn-out and leaving the profession altogether.

I had experienced this from working with children and adult victims of violence and thought I will not be working in my profession after having left it (I was a medical examiner), but God provided me in the hiatus a chance to look into the stressors as well as resiliency boosts that will also make for compassion satisfaction, i.e. effective empathy and service to the injured patient/client.

It is interesting that the handout (from the National Child Traumatic Network, mctsn.org) cites that a traumatized therapist or helping agency is pretty much useless to identify or intervene in the trauma of individuals it seeks to serve. Thus they devote a lot of listing of resources towards prevention (aside from the recognition and support by employers through supervision, awareness training, self-care groups there are also individual interventions such as deploying a Professional Quality of Life Measure, self-reporting surveys, and methods (rest, nutrition, exercise), buddying systems, flex time and case load balancing, using EAP and general connections).

But there is something that made for crucial reading too for me: while those who are incurring too heavy a caseload or feeling isolated or inadequately trained, those that are protected against caregiver stress is the "longer duration of professional experience and use of evidence-based practices in the course of providing care". It seems that a good bulk of evidence-based practices also relates to giving good self-care, but the longer duration of actual field work as a protective factor is hope to many.
I have looked into male and female forensic and medical colleagues and thought, "How can they do this for so long?" I mean, many retire in this field. Yet it is precisely in staying the course that makes them resilient and build the weapons that will buffer them in the fight for justice and good.

This is confirmed by another reading related to ministry though more engaging and certainly spiritually motivating--Lord, Renew Your Wonders by Catholic healer and UK charismatic community founder Damien Stayne. He invites people to consider that if we all agree that it is important to develop natural gifts, should we not even have a greater push to do so for spiritual gifts? The spiritual gifts, the book defends, of signs and wonders, the charisms, is necessary in winning many to the faith in this crucial time, and not simply because it is Jesus' ministry as well: healing, preaching and teaching, miracles and wonders.
He later writes (p. 24), "History demonstrates that those with more expertise and more holiness are invariably more effective and fruitful in the exercise of their spiritual gifts. But these are not the fundamental criteria for beginning."

More expertise would mean more practice and exercise of it, more training. The more you use, the more you are given. This is a Biblical truth as well.
I review this in the context of health care where many people, like myself before, fearful of the burnout that can happen, chose to withdraw care instead of give. When one is more seasoned, the caseload will be a thing of less important that is the servant attitude associated with it.

I had worked in public health where states often compare the work staff do towards a certain prevention program. It was found that PA hospital nurses capture all health-care associated infections, not just the six CDC uses in their national reporting metrics. They monitor them and they prevent them and they database them. When the other states said they are only doing what is required or the minimum, the PA nurses were given the choice to be like the others, but they refused. They have raised their work-level to being vigilant about all types of infections, they have gotten proficient at them all and so why degrade their standard to less?

There is a dictum: the busy gets more work done. Somehow I reasoned, if there is accountability (even self or buddy, for those who are self-starters) in doing projects for service, they will also tend to help in other good deeds as well. The recent classic forensic text I ordered gave tribute to the "Father of Legal Medicine" a doctor named Rutherford Gradwohl who was an autopsy pathologist, teacher, writer, lecturer, founder of departments of forensics, journals, associations, crime labs and conferences and did I mention he was a decorated navyman too responsible for the archiving of military men's blood samples should they needed to be identified if they die, plus he was a handball player and a chef. His tutee, a man named Camps, was a similar Renaissance man.

The Holy Spirit blows when and where He wants for sure--and these religious and secular texts were all helpful to me in outlining a basic premise in the spiritual life. Everything is gift. The effects of our talents, our careers, our longevity or our fruits in doing anything at all is made meaningful by our dependence on God on how He will use us and part of that dependence is also cooperating joyfully and generously into serving his people, not in merely simple humanitarian charity or didactic theology, as Damian says but "bear the aroma of the Savior through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, St. Pope John Paul II exhorts, "Open yourself docilely to the gifts of the Holy Sprit! Accept gratefully and obediently the charisms which the Spirit never ceases to bestow on us!"