Workplace stress affects everyone and all too often we bring it home to our families. We may feel helpless confronted with the enormous need for change in the structural aspects of large systems. However, as leaders, managers, and workers, we are able to create workplace environments that honor emotions without being controlled by them. Where interpersonal conflicts are successfully managed, and where staff have a clear set of operating values that guide our interactions with each other and our clients in ways that promote well-being. This presentation will address readjusting our own workplaces, which means thinking about them not as machines but as living organizations; not entirely dissimilar to our own bodies or “biocracies”. Thus, we are better able to describe what we are aiming for in the workplace: health for everyone.
Dr. Sandra L. Bloom is a Board-Certified psychiatrist, graduate of Temple University School of Medicine and currently Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University. She is also the Founder of Creating Presence, an online organizational approach for creating trauma-informed systems. Dr. Bloom is a Past-President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and author or co-author of a series of books on trauma-informed care. She is currently co-chairing CTIPP – The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice, a national organization whose goal is to advocate for public policies and programs at the federal, state, local and tribal levels that incorporate up-to-date scientific findings regarding the relationship between trauma across the lifespan and many social and health problems.