About Kristen
Kristen M. Fischer, MSW, LMSW, NSW-C has worked as a Medical Social Worker for 25 years and brings to the table a wide variety of experiences and perspectives that serve patients, healthcare professionals, and her community. Kristen grew up in a small town in North Dakota, lived and studied in Chicago and Minneapolis, and integrates the diverse knowledge from each of her experiences into her work. She skillfully navigates the healthcare system and its challenges and is highly invested in the intersection between healthcare practice, workforce well-being, and patient advocacy.
Kristen is proud to have served as a Clinical Ethics Consultant for more than a decade. Her special areas of interest and expertise are moral distress, staff resiliency and professional boundaries. She is a well-recognized local, regional and national public speaker for both community and professional audiences.
Kristen is a deeply engaged and involved member of the Social Work community on a local and national level, including serving as a member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Council of Nephrology Social Workers Executive Committee, and a board member for the National Association of Social Workers North Dakota chapter. She also serves as a Peer Mentor through the Organ Donation and Transplant Alliance
Outside her professional accomplishments, Kristen is a wife of nearly 25 years to Monte, mother of two teenagers, and to two four-legged friends. She is a skilled photographer, loves reading anything and everything and spending time on the lake in North Dakota’s very short summertime!
In Her Own Words
Anyone who knows me knows my most important job is cheering for my kids on at their various sporting events. My most cherished title is Hockey/Softball/Baseball Mom. The same “cheerleader” title has followed me throughout my life. I was a high school and college (Go UND!) cheerleader, and still cheer on those around me in my professional life. My greatest passion is empowerment. I love seeing the “light bulb moments” for my patients and colleagues when they discover they have what it takes to break through the challenges that our healthcare system so often presents to us all.
A few ways I love to empower those around me include:
- Guiding transplant colleagues and contemporaries on how to identify and evaluate patients’ cognitive difficulties and tailor education and resources to help them be successful transplant candidates
- Moderating discussions with healthcare providers and staff to help identify and address moral distress, and mitigate the environmental and patient issues that contribute to moral distress.
- Helping teams to recognize internal and external constraints that make it difficult to carry out their ethical obligations with patient care. Present a framework to evaluate the situation, identify areas of opportunity, improvement, and collaboration.
- Promoting and providing opportunities for self-care to ameliorate the consequences of stress, burnout, moral distress and trauma. Advocating with and for healthcare professionals to help leadership understand that “resilience” cannot be achieved or sustained without the support of a health workplace culture.
- Integrating the concept of trauma-informed health care and ethics consultation into the culture of the healthcare environment, to keep front-of-mind the experiences that patients, families and colleagues bring to a given situation. Reminder to practice “grace” at let the narrative guide the decison-making.
- Developing healthcare professionals’ capacity to recognize and mitigate the risks of the working environment that inherently make it difficult to maintain professional boundaries. Providing practical and applicable tips and recommendations for maintaining professional boundaries, and practicing within the scope of professional codes of ethics, including their social media presence.
- Engaging leadership in discussions regarding moral distress, and how it contributes to employee satisfaction, retention and well-being. Identify best practices for creating a culture that acknowledges, names, and addresses moral distress as a matter of habit, and promotes healthy and safe dialogue – with everyone at the same level and having a voice at the table.
