ASPM 2023 Conference

Sense of Safety: the heart of whole person care (17640)

Johanna Lynch 1
  1. Dr Johanna Lynch, Herston, QLD, Australia

Overview

Sense of Safety is an embodied experience relevant in every human interaction, its presence is associated with physiological calm, connection to community, and cultural and contextual belonging. This session will reflect on how assessing and building Sense of Safety in the whole person is at the heart of generalist practice.

 

Body

Dr Lynch will discuss the sophisticated knowledge work that is generalist practice and make a case for the need for a shared language that helps clinicians to attend to both biology and biography of the whole person. She will then reflect on the whole person experiences of wellbeing and distress and discuss the pragmatic need for strength-based and trauma-informed approaches to care. She will reflect on the links between safety and wholeness and explain her commitment to the concept of ‘sense of safety’ in assessment and treatment of distress in primary care. Finally, she will outline a framework of content (Whole Person Domains) and processes (Sense of Safety Dynamics) that could help clinicians to stay true to the heart of general practice – the deep moral purpose of our work – building Sense of Safety… in each person, and in each of our communities.

 

Learning Objectives

1.Explore the scope of whole person care at the heart of generalist practice

2.Reflect on the need for a shared language to define the core priorities of general practice that cross disciplines

3.Develop a clear understanding of the content and processes of sense of safety approaches to whole person care