Care coordinators' responses to clients' trauma: the role of coping and perceived organisational support

Research suggests that working with trauma survivors can result in a range of negative effects including ‘vicarious trauma’, ‘secondary trauma’, ‘compassion fatigue’ and ‘burnout’ amongst other things. Although the impact of being exposed to traumatic stories has been investigated in a range of professionals no studies to date have explored the impact of this on UK mental health workers known as care coordinators. The aim of this study was to explore a sample of care coordinators responses to client’s traumatic stories and the role of coping and perceived organisational support.
Twelve UK care coordinators (community psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists and social workers) from two NHS mental health recovery teams completed interviews about their experiences of hearing clients’ traumatic experiences. Grounded theory was employed to analyse the interviews.
The care coordinators heard traumatic stories in their role and were ‘active participants’ in these disclosures. They also experienced short and long-term levels of distress which included a range of negative emotions, a mixture of positive and negative responses and a broadening of their perspectives on themselves, their clients and the world. Care coordinators also developed a range of individual coping strategies, experienced individual and organisational barriers to seeking support and experienced limited organisational support for hearing traumatic stories.
This is the first UK study to investigate care coordinators’ responses to clients’ traumatic experiences. Therefore further exploratory studies are required in addition to studies with larger sample sizes and measures of trauma related symptoms.