Giving voice to service providers who work with survivors of torture and trauma

Abstract

Clinicians who support people from refugee- and asylum-seeking backgrounds are routinely exposed to stories of trauma as part of their work. Hearing these stories can be highly distressing for clinicians but simultaneously provide opportunities for positive personal growth. Adopting a longitudinal qualitative design, we interviewed 12 service providers at two time points a year apart. We used a semistructured interview protocol and analyzed the data according to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five superordinate and nineteen constituent themes emerged from the analysis at Time 1 and Time 2. We found that participants were both positively and negatively affected by their work, and their experiences remained relatively stable across time. The participants highlighted the use of organizational and personal coping strategies to help minimize distress and maximize well-being. Adopting a broad repertoire of such strategies is not only advantageous for the service providers but ultimately for those people they seek to assist.

Keywords: health care professionals; interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA); interviews, semistructured; lived experience; longitudinal studies; refugees; stress/distress; trauma.