Voices on the Frontline: Innovating Our Work to Support Reflective Practice with Nurses
Amy Hill
In workshops like this, the Nurse-Family Partnership is taking care of us, so we can take care of our clients, so they can take care of their babies. It’s parallel process. It’s NFP.
- Participant, StoryCenter online writing workshop
The Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) empowers first-time parents to transform their lives and create better futures for themselves and their babies. NFP works by having specially educated nurses regularly visit young, first-time moms-to-be, starting early in the pregnancy and continuing through the child’s second birthday. Like others working in healthcare and the helping professions more broadly, these dedicated providers have since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic been forced to shift from in-person visits to mobile and Zoom meetings. They were used to sitting on couches and holding babies face to face; now, with remote work and continuous waves of the pandemic, they’re facing burnout and compassion fatigue.
We at StoryCenter were also used to being face-to-face with storytellers, including nurses with NFP, with whom we’ve created a multi-year program of in-person digital storytelling workshops. Alongside NFP, our organization was forced to innovate how we were working. In the spring of 2020, we shifted to offering NFP staff the opportunity to participate in weekly, hour-long reflective writing workshops, designed to provide them with an accessible way to reflect on their work. Each week focuses on a specific theme, such as gratitude, struggle, resilience, small heroes, etc. NFP nurses, nurse supervisors, and even NFP administrative staff from around the country are coming together weekly to respond to writing prompts designed to help them process the challenges of their work and lives. Participants have likened the sessions to a meditation group– an apt comparison given that NFP’s Wellness Team is funding the program.
To date, more than 500 nurses have participated in the program, with more than 85% reporting that the workshops have better prepared them to handle the ongoing stresses of the work they do. Below we share Emily Wildman’s story, Eddie, a story about a nurse home-visitor during the pandemic, babies she has not held in far too long, and an injured bird. Watch, listen to, and read more of these powerful stories online.