Ellen Fink-Samnick
Social workers are familiar with self-care and its importance to creating and maintaining a life-long passion for our work. While self-care is extremely important for professionals, it traditionally focuses on taking care of ourselves in areas of life outside of our work environments. Professional resilience is an approach to achieving balance among occupational and life stresses that also work to foster both professional values and sustainability that infuses everyday practices both inside and outside of our professional work.
In this podcast, Ellen Fink-Samnick, LCSW, offers a model for fostering professional resilience. This model is framed by six pillars that incorporate but go beyond traditional self-care practices. These pillars support nineteen strategies and action steps for promoting professional resilience. Though of definite value to social workers, this eminently practical model was designed to be beneficial for a transdisciplinary workforce.
Ellen Fink-Samnick is a popular presenter and esteemed author with many publications across diverse media. She is a 1983 graduate of the University of Buffalo’s School of Social Work, and has received global recognition for her innovative practice models including the Professional Resilience Paradigm© and E-Tech Ethics©. With Teresa Treiger, Ellen is co-author of the book COLLABORATE© for Professional Case Management: A Universal Competency-Based Paradigm, 1st Edition, to be published by Wolters Kluwer in Summer 2015. She currently serves as Adjunct Faculty for George Mason University’s College of Health & Human Services, Director of Social Work Education for Athena Forum, LinkedIn Moderator for Ellen’s Ethical Lens™, Editorial Board Member for Professional Case Management, Lead Clinical Supervision Trainer for The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) of VA and Clinical Social Work Supervisor. Ellen has also served as an exam item writer for both the Association of Social Work Boards and Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC), and a contributor to the Case Management Society of America’s (CMSA) Career and Knowledge Pathways℠. Ellen is an Ethics Category Honorable Mention for the Dorland Health People Awards, recipient of the Master Teacher Award for George Mason University’s College of Health & Human Services and Case Manager of the Year for the Case Management Society of America’s Washington, DC Chapter. She has served as a Commissioner for CCMC and Chair of their Ethics & Professional Conduct Committee, plus in a variety of leadership roles amid the industry’s professional associations. You can learn more about Ellen and her work at http://www.efssupervisionstrategies.com/.
Interviewer: Steven Schwartz
