Pavlov's Couch

I have been struggling with a thumping headache all day so our Indian themed Christmas lunch was a nice break from getting frustrated at my inability to read journals. It was made even nicer when I was surprised by a lovely thankyou card from the team and a WHSmith voucher

My reflective report made me realise just how much I have learned while I have been here (far more than I could do justice in the 1500 words I had!) My placement here has been fantastic and I am so grateful for all the opportunities I have been given, including the opportunity to continue working here as a paid staff member. I am also thankful that it has put me in touch with so many other people in the field and the doors that has opened for me.

I have missed uni, and my friends there, but I will never regret this placement

I always value feedback from others about how I work, how I act, and so on. We learn through our mistakes not through our successes, but to be able to do that we need to be aware of our mistakes (or “opportunities for improvement”). As long as feedback is given constructively and in a non-attacking way then I am more than happy to listen. Although there will be a day when I have to learn from mistakes by having service users shout at me, or worse!

My placement supervisor gave me some constructive feedback the other day – I sometimes jump in with suggested solutions to problems without finding out first what has been tried already. This is an aspect of myself I hadn’t really considered before and being aware of it now will hopefully improve my performance both in the workplace and, in the future, in a therapeutic setting.

That is somewhat linked to another problem I have had highlighted to me recently: that even when trying my best to be understanding I can come off as overly clinical. Again this applies particularly when I am helping someone find solutions to a problem. I suspect my previous career as a programmer/analyst has given me a very objective approach to problem solving. I will need to be especially aware of this in the future as it could affect any therapeutic work I may do.

I recently observed training the ward staff in the use of the new drug kits, so I have learned how to administer and read a urine drug test (although of course I am not clinically qualified to do so!). I also learned a bit about how they work (confusing chemistry stuff to do with competition at binding sites) and what different ways and products can be used to tamper with the test and how these can be tested for (temperature, pH, presence of creatinine, specific gravity, and nitrites).

There is a thought forming at the back of my mind: how much of this is actually psychology related?
Partly this is because the team I am on is part psychology and part forensic. Also a little down to the team being comprised largely of staff nurses.
However I am also learning that clinical psychologists in the NHS, particularly working in applied areas like forensic and dual-diagnosis, have to do a very wide range of tasks. In the setting I am in the clinical psychologists design and facilitate the groups, sometimes have to perform “pat down” searches of service users coming for groups, visit service users in the community, write reports until their fingers bleed, manage teams, provide one-to-one interventions and LOTS more. It is a very varied and demanding role!

A bus pulled into the hospital the other day with a huge advert on the side for a new film. In giant letters down the bus: “Contagion”

But that is not even the worst I have heard of. The NHS is very keen to encourage people to get flu shots since even if the virus doesn’t affect you much you could still pass it on to someone with a weak immune system and it could kill them. However someone obviously wasn’t thinking when they sent the posters to be put up in the forensic (criminal) mental health secure ward. In bold letters the posters pose the question: “Could you be sitting next to a killer?”

Brain fail.

Well it has been quite a week! I have spent a long time learning about infection control, clinical risk, Rio (the patient records software), child safeguarding, vulnerable adult safeguarding, how to safely carry weights, and health and safety. I have had a test, got to know a group of professionals from a whole range of fields with a collective four hundred years experience in mental health, acted as Second Judge in a role play court case investigating the (imaginary) suicide of a service user and whether the mental health services held any responsibility, had my hands glow green under uv light, acted like a robot and a child, given a presentation prepared in two minutes, and eaten a lot of chips from the work rehabilitation cafe. Oh, and I bumped into an ex Brunel student!

And the induction isn’t even over yet!

On a side note I bumped into my manager the other day and she said she was very impressed by my re-edited DVD and was on her way to a meeting with the director and would sing my praise. I have to admit that thought did bring a happy smile to my face

I have to admit, when I looked at the timetable and saw the first day of my induction was filled with tutorials on confidentiality policy, equality and diversity regulations, and fire safety training I let out a subtle groan. Having been employed before I have done all these things at least once already so there is nothing more I could learn right? Wrong.

While the confidentiality session was very familiar material, especially since I have done it to death very recently, the Freedom of Information Act material was new to me, as was much of the Equality and Diversity session since there have been so many legal changes over the past couple of years. And the fire safety…well nothing new there but I did get to blast a chair with CO2 which was fun