This group may be for you if:

Shared professional context

You want to talk with peers who share direct experience of emergency and critical care nursing, including shift work, high-acuity patients and the pace of the unit.
You would like to spend less time explaining the job, and more time on your mental health and the issues you bring to session.

Pressures of the role

You work in a high-pressure, high-consequence environment, where stress can lead to difficult interactions, conflict and communication breakdowns with colleagues, patients and families.
You are dealing with staffing shortages and heavy workloads, or experiencing violence in the workplace.
You are managing the demands of the job alongside parenting, caregiving, relationships and time for yourself.

Trauma and cumulative stress

You are carrying the effects of critical incidents, patient deaths, secondhand trauma and cumulative stress.
You are experiencing moral distress or moral injury.
You want to recognize early signs of caregiver burnout, compassion fatigue and sleep disruption.

Peer connection and support

You want to give and receive support, and speak openly in a confidential setting.
You want to learn practical grounding and regulation skills together, and to share your own strategies and insights to help others.
You want to build peer relationships that can continue beyond the group.

Issues often addressed in group

You work in an emergency department or intensive care unit and find that people outside the job rarely understand what the work involves.
You have few opportunities at work to talk about the impact of the job with peers who share that experience.
You have cared for patients through trauma, resuscitation, paediatric emergencies, sudden death or end-of-life care, and those experiences have stayed with you longer than you expected.
Situations at work have conflicted with your own sense of what is right, such as being unable to provide the care you believe patients need because of staffing, resources or decisions outside your control, and that has been difficult to set aside.
You have noticed stress building over time, whether as disrupted sleep, a sense of always being on alert, irritability, exhaustion or suicidal ideation.
You have experienced verbal or physical aggression from patients or families, or felt unsupported by your workplace afterward.
You are struggling to remain composed and efficient after what you have just witnessed.
You are trying to balance shift work and overtime alongside parenting, caregiving, relationships and time for yourself.
Your professional role has come to take up more of your identity than you would like.
You have hesitated to seek support because of stigma or concern about how it might affect your career.
You have found yourself relying more on alcohol or substances, withdrawing from others or overworking as a way of coping.
You are weighing how to sustain your career over the long term, or whether a change may be right for you.

In the group, you will have the opportunity to…

Speak about your work with peers who already understand it.
Work through critical incidents, patient deaths and accumulated stress in a structured, confidential setting.
Share and learn grounding, emotional regulation and stress management skills with others.
Recognize early signs of burnout, compassion fatigue and hypervigilance, in yourself and in others.
Speak openly about difficult experiences in ways that can carry over into your relationships at home and in community.
Receive direct support from nurses in your field, and learn from how they cope and set boundaries.
Build peer connections that can continue as a source of support after the group ends.

Benefits of the small group format

With four participants, you will have substantial time to speak in every session, and trust tends to develop more quickly than it does in larger groups. You benefit from the perspectives of several peers as well as the therapist. 2.5-hour sessions allow topics to be explored in depth within a single meeting, and because the group sets its own schedule, sessions can be arranged around shift rotations. A defined number of sessions provides a clear commitment from the outset, with the option to continue if the group wishes.

Confidential and independent

Group psychotherapy is provided from a private practice and is confidential and independent of your hospital, employer or EAP.

Fees

Sessions are billed at $180 per session, and receipts will be provided to you for reimbursement from your benefits provider.

How to register

To register, use the Register Now button below and complete your registration. Please indicate that you are interested in the Crisis Nurses (Emergency/ICU) group.

I will be in touch with you to discuss next steps.

Crisis Nurses: Emergency/ICU