Counselling for Healthcare Professionals

Therapy for people who spend their working lives looking after others. In person in Burnaby and Kitsilano, and online across British Columbia.

Healthcare workers are regularly exposed to forms of pressure that extend well beyond the hours of a shift. Clinical responsibility, repeated exposure to distress and crisis, difficult handovers, high-stakes decisions, and the knowledge that something may have been missed or left unresolved can remain with people long after they leave work.

The language of resilience and self-care can quickly feel inadequate when it is presented without acknowledging the conditions of the work itself.

I work with healthcare staff across the concerns that bring anyone to counselling, including anxiety and depression, trauma, relationship difficulties and life transitions. Within that, what I go deepest on is the specific weight this work puts on the people doing it.

What people in this work describe

People who work in healthcare frequently do not self-identify as overwhelmed, burnt out, or struggling, even when experiencing recognized symptoms of occupational stress. More often, it shows up in smaller shifts in how they think, feel, sleep, relate to other people, and move through the day.

Some of the things that people tell me about are:

  • going home still holding a patient or a decision

  • a shorter fuse with the people you actually like

  • the flatness that turns up somewhere between caring too much and not being able to any more

  • doubt about a call you made, running long after the shift ended

  • sleep organized around rotations rather than around rest

  • giving advice all day that you have not taken in months

Why this job is different

The strain of healthcare work is not only a matter of long hours or difficult shifts. Sustained exposure to other people's distress carries its own cost, and that cost can accumulate even when the roster itself looks manageable.

What wears people down can also be what they were unable to do. The resource that was not available. The decision made somewhere above them. The care they knew a patient needed but could not provide.

Healthcare workers often recognise the problem late. The threshold for deciding that something is serious enough to warrant attention tends to be set unusually high, often because distress is measured against what patients are going through.

How I work with healthcare professionals

My approach is structured, active and focused on the present, which tends to suit people who have limited time and no appetite for an open-ended process. I will guide sessions, ask direct questions and give you something practical to leave with.

Underneath the specific techniques I work from one question: what is this thought or behaviour actually doing for you? Detachment, hypervigilance and the habit of carrying everything alone all started out doing a job. Understanding the job they were doing is usually more useful than trying to stop them by force.

Practical points that matter

Sessions run online across British Columbia, which is usually the difference between attending and cancelling when a rotation changes. I also see clients in person at my Burnaby office in Metrotower II, 4720 Kingsway, and at my Pine office in Kitsilano, Vancouver.

On confidentiality: what you bring to sessions is private and separate from your workplace, your employer, and any assistance programme they run.

Where and when I work

I see clients in person at:

  • my Burnaby office in Metrotower II, 4720 Kingsway

  • my Pine office in Kitsilano, Vancouver at 1682 W 7th Ave

  • online with anywhere in British Columbia

In order to make therapy as accessible as possible to fit into the busy schedules of my clients, I offer sessions during the day (including lunch time), in the evenings, and on workdays and weekends.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about counselling for healthcare professionals

  • They overlap and the labels matter less than the pattern underneath. Working out what is actually driving it is part of the first few sessions, and it changes what we do.

  • Usually. Online sessions remove the travel, and we can work around a rotation rather than assuming the same slot every week.

  • No. Seeking counselling is not a reportable matter, and what you discuss with me stays between us.

  • That belief is close to universal in this profession and is worth examining rather than accepting. Being trained to manage other people's crises does not confer any particular advantage in managing your own.