Hi All! My name is Susan Halvor. I’m the manager of a spiritual care department in Anchorage, Alaska, and spent 11 years as a Children’s Hospital Chaplain. I’m also an ordained Lutheran pastor. One of the big challenges we’re facing in our hospital is workplace violence — in particular, often our patients who live with addictions can be very verbally abusive to our hospital caregivers, as well as at times physically abusive (that, compounded with patients with mental illness, dementia, TBIs, and sometimes combinations of those factors, as well as being socially vulnerable and/or homeless, leads to a lot of challenges!)
One of my hopes is that with better understanding of addiction, our hospital caregivers can retain their compassion for the patients and families we serve, recognizing that addiction is a brain disease, not just a state of “making bad choices.”