Laboratory Animal Welfare Meets Human Welfare

Join this 2.5 hour workshop on November 18: Compassion Fatigue and Self Care, presented by the Canadian Mental Health Association and facilitated by Rebecca Higgins. Laboratory animal personnel often experience significant stress from working with animals in scientific research. Recent literature suggests that 87% of North American animal care professionals have experienced compassion fatigue at one point or another from working with animals in scientific research. Many laboratory animal personnel are responsible for directly or indirectly caring for laboratory animals and often form attachments with them.

The facilitator will cover the following topics:

- Define compassion fatigue and discuss how it looks and feels
- Explore risk factors for compassion fatigue
- Utilize an individual self-assessment tool to reflect on our own compassion satisfaction, stress, and fatigue
- Explore some of the challenges to self-care
- Share and discuss a variety of self-care strategies
- Consider supplementary resources locally and online

Learning opportunities include videos, practice exercises (breathing, grounding), small group discussion, large group discussion, individual reflection, and facilitator sharing.