Empowered Healer: Creating an Empowerment Plan for Our Healthcare Professional Clients
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Healthcare professionals are often trained to keep functioning under pressure, even when they are grieving, burned out, overwhelmed, or experiencing signs of emotional or behavioral relapse. For many clinicians, nurses, physicians, first responders, and other healthcare workers, the same commitment that makes them effective helpers can also make it difficult to slow down, seek support, recognize impairment, or respond to their own early warning signs before distress escalates.
For behavioral health professionals, supporting healthcare professional clients requires more than offering coping skills or encouraging “resilience.” These clients may need a more individualized, nonjudgmental, and practical way to understand their inner experience, identify subtle signs of distress, and create a plan that honors both their professional responsibilities and their humanity.
Elizabeth Hartshorn, LPC, MAC, brings more than 30 years of experience in mental health and addiction treatment, along with experience as a clinical supervisor, educator, and clinician focused on working with licensed healthcare professionals. Her background allows her to address burnout, relapse prevention, professional impairment, and self-care with practical insight into the pressures healthcare professionals face and the importance of helping helpers reconnect with their own needs, values, and inner wisdom.
Rather than positioning clients as problems to be fixed, this course introduces the empowerment plan as a humanistic, individualized complement to traditional treatment planning. Elizabeth Hartshorn acknowledges that formal treatment plans may still be required in many clinical, agency, and insurance-based settings, while showing how empowerment planning can help clients identify what matters to them, where they feel depleted, and what kinds of support are realistic in daily life.
Clinicians explore how tools such as an “Empowered Healer” declaration, circles or life-area wheels, personalized mood tracking, somatic awareness, and daily rituals can help clients build self-awareness without turning recovery into another perfectionistic goal-setting exercise. A major emphasis is recognizing early “whispers,” “taps,” and “sledgehammers” of distress so clients can respond sooner, revise their plan with less shame, and develop a more compassionate understanding of their whole life.
Key Takeaways
- A humanistic planning framework: Learn how empowerment planning can support clients in reconnecting with their strengths, needs, values, and sources of support.
- Earlier awareness of distress: Explore how subtle changes in daily functioning can become useful clinical information before a crisis develops.
- A nonjudgmental approach to relapse: Understand how setbacks can be used to revise care, increase support, and reduce shame rather than reinforce self-blame.
- Practical support for healthcare professionals: Gain a framework for helping helpers slow down, acknowledge when they are struggling, and respond with greater self-awareness.
Why This Course?
- Healthcare professionals face unique barriers to care: Helpers may minimize their own distress, feel shame about needing support, or believe they cannot step back from work even when they are struggling.
- The approach is practical and individualized: The empowerment plan gives clinicians a flexible structure that can be adapted to the client’s actual life, work demands, warning signs, and support system.
- The course moves beyond “just be more resilient”: Rather than placing responsibility solely on the individual, the training acknowledges workplace stress, moral injury, professional isolation, and the need for compassionate, realistic support.
- The framework supports clinical judgment: Clinicians are encouraged to use empowerment planning thoughtfully while still recognizing when diagnosis, treatment planning, referral, medication evaluation, or a higher level of care may be needed.
Learning Objectives
- Identify at least two examples of micro and macro relapse warning signs.
- Describe how to create a sample empowerment plan template.
- Apply the interventions for “whispers, taps and sledgehammers” of recovery and relapse.
- Identify examples of daily rituals for recovery.
- Compare and contrast the benefits of intention setting vs. goal setting.
Register for this course to learn a practical, reflective framework for helping healthcare professional clients recognize early signs of distress, develop individualized support strategies, and approach recovery with greater self-awareness, flexibility, and compassion.
Format and Access
This is a non-interactive, self-study program and consists of 2 hours of video instruction and a post-test.
From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework. This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services. This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation. Course access and completion instructions. Elizabeth Hartshorn is the owner of Full Circle Counseling & Coaching, LLC, based in West Linn, Oregon. With over three decades of experience in the fields of mental health and addiction treatment. Elizabeth is an approved clinical supervisor with the Oregon Board of Professional Counselors and Therapists. Her extensive experience includes adjunct faculty for the counselor education department at Portland State University and former board member for the Oregon Board of Professional Counselors. Driven by her own dark night of the soul, Elizabeth has honed her clinical focus on treating licensed healthcare professionals and providing professional training. Additionally, she offers the "Empowered Healer" online coaching program, which is designed to extend her reach and impact. Outside her professional endeavors, Elizabeth treasures the time spent engaging in outdoor activities in the Pacific Northwest and with her grandson, who she fondly believes to be the sweetest boy in the world. The instructor(s) for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose. This course consists of 2 continuing education hours of credit. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No, 6693. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Mental Health Counselors. #MHC-0048. Many MFT licensing boards accept our courses or one of the approvals which we have from professional associations. You can check with your board to determine if your licensing board would accept this course. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0135. Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, #1609, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 05/02/2024 – 05/02/2027. Social workers completing this course receive 2 clinical continuing education credits. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Social Workers #SW-0435. This course has been approved by Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #193104, Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is responsible for all aspects of the programming. Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Telehealth Certification Institute LLC maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Psychologists #PSY-0128. Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Creative Arts Therapists #CAT-0093. This course qualifies for 120 minutes of instructional content as required by many national, state and local licensing boards and professional organizations. Retain your certificate of completion and contact your board or organization for specific filing requirements. This course is an-interactive, live online webinar. Participants may request a printed version of their certificate of completion to be delivered by mail. A shipping/handling fee of $6.95 will be charged per request. Shipping internationally may require an additional charge. Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations. You can click on the following links to view our policies:Course Details
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Instructor and Disclosures
Instructor
About Elizabeth Hartshorn, LPC
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CE Hours
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Counselors:
Marriage and Family Therapists:
Social Workers:
Addiction Professionals:
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Accommodations and Policies
This course was recorded 11/14/2025
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