Skip to main content
On Demand

NDAA Well-being Webinar: “Just Part of the Job”: Why This Can No Longer Be an Excuse to Ignore Trauma, Stress and Burnout


Total Credits: 1.0 including 1.0 Ethics CLE, 1.0 CLE

Average Rating:
   108
Categories:
NDAA Well-being Series |  Ethics
Faculty:
Megan Zwisohn
Duration:
58 Minutes
Format:
Audio and Video
License:
Never expires.


Description

The responsibilities of a prosecutor and victim-witness advocate inevitably expose us to trauma and stress causing physiological changes to our brains and bodies. These changes can be exacerbated by conditions ripe for burnout. In this hour we will discuss the effects of each of these, as well as ways to help ourselves and others have long and healthy careers.

Handouts

Faculty

Megan Zwisohn's Profile

Megan Zwisohn Related Seminars and Products

Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney

Rockbridge County


Megan C. Zwisohn graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from Old Dominion University in 1991. While studying at ODU she externed at the Help and Emergency Response (HER) Shelter for Battered Women where she was hired after graduation to be their special projects coordinator. She received her Juris Doctor from Albany Law School in 1995, having spent her third year studying at the University of Richmond School of Law. While at Albany Law she was a founding member of their Domestic Violence clinic and during her third year at Richmond she staffed the VA Supreme Court’s Commission on Family Violence Prevention. Megan taught as a full-time instructor in Old Dominion's Criminal Justice Department from 1995-1997. She taught substantive criminal law for Old Dominion as an adjunct professor from 1997 until 2015 and was an adjunct at William & Mary Law School from 2013 until 2020. She began her career as a prosecutor in 1997 in the Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney's office. Megan worked in the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's office from 2003 until 2012, where she was a Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney until joining Gloucester’s Commonwealth’s Attorney’s in 2012 as the Chief Deputy. She is currently with the Rockbridge County and City of Lexington Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office. Megan has served as faculty for the Commonwealth's Attorney Services Council's Trial Advocacy Course from 2004. She has also been called on to lecture and train prosecutors and law enforcement officers on a variety of topics. Megan is listed as an Expert in Wellness in the Virginia Supreme Court’s 2018 report, A Profession at Risk, about attorney well-being and published Vicarious Trauma in Public Service Lawyering: How Chronic Exposure to Trauma Affects the Brain and Body in the April 2019 UR Public Interest Law Review. She received the 2020 Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys Virginia S. Duvall Distinguished JDR Assistant Award.