Thanks for the advice on the shield, I'll give it a shot. Just checked my Skills tree, and looks like I neglected to allocate any to the Shields portion of it. I ended up spending everything on the two top trees.
I am currently Rear Admiral, Upper Half (46), currently equipped with a Recoil Compensating Armor Mk X. But this has been happening since I started playing (about a month ago) and no matter what shields I swap to, it's always the same story. I've tried shields with anti-polaron/phaser/disruptor boosts (is that the correct…