Takeaway
Mistakes in patient care are not uncommon. Clinicians can lean on their support systems to recover from stressful events at work. Taking care of yourself enables you to continue giving compassionate care.
Lifelong Learning in Clinical Excellence | May 6, 2025 | 2 min read
Albert Wu, MD, MPH & Matt Norvell, DMin, MS, Johns Hopkins Medicine
“Wait. The patient got how much medication? That’s twice the indicated dose. This could be terrible.”
This type of experience is familiar for anyone who has ever taken care of patients—the realization you made an error that caused harm. The emotional reaction is universal, natural, and fast-tracks the neural and endocrine pathways that humans share—shock, anxiety, grief, shame, and self-criticism.
Depending on the context, additional sources of distress might present themselves: uncharitable reactions from peers, angry or violent reactions from the patient or their family, and/or the threat of a malpractice suit.
These feelings can persist and morph into distressing flashbacks, insomnia, depression, withdrawal, self-doubt, and loss of self-confidence. In some situations, these symptoms can develop into PTSD. Taken together, these experiences can provoke an existential crisis causing you to question yourself, your abilities, and your choice of profession.
Healthcare professionals self-select this profession because we want to help people. Simultaneously, we live with the secret knowledge that we can also do harm. Even though today we know it’s often the healthcare system itself that creates safety hazards, medical errors still feel very personal.
Because we’re human, work in complex systems, and care for other humans with their own variables, there will always be a need to provide acute support for healthcare professionals. We must prioritize individual and organizational practices to promote the resilience necessary to do continue the important work of caring for people.
Strategies at the individual level include seeking social support, cognitive approaches to restore personal sense of mastery and self-esteem, and focusing on one’s own basic needs. Personal support can come from trusted colleagues, family, friends, and faith communities. Even though we sometimes engage in maladaptive coping strategies that prevent us from moving ahead, as healthcare professionals we must turn the compassionate care and encouragement we offer others toward ourselves.
Peer support is a particular instance of support provided by others who have experienced similar situations. According to SAMSA: Through shared understanding, respect, and mutual empowerment, peer support helps people become and stay engaged in the recovery/healing process. Peer support can help you heal.
At Johns Hopkins, a convenient and effective organizational resource is the RISE (Resilience In Stressful Events) peer support program. The team’s mission is to “Provide confidential, timely peer support to employees who encounter stressful, work-related events.” Trained RISE volunteers are on-call 24/7 to provide emotional support for any worker at Hopkins. Callers can take comfort that the program doesn’t document or report details of the conversations. This year the program is on track to support over 2500 individuals across the Hopkins system.
Any unexpected, stressful, work-related event can leave us emotionally injured. There are ways you can help yourself, but you don’t have to live through that experience in isolation. Whether it’s through your trusted colleague, or through other suport systems, there is no burden that you must bear alone.
Click on the links to learn more about the authors: Albert Wu, MD, MPH & Matt Norvell, DMin, MS, Johns Hopkins Medicine
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.