After 7 years in a training role in a large mental health trust, I have now stepped back into a clinical role. The role is as a primary care nurse, helping to move clients from secondary care services like Community Mental Health Teams into GP care. Of course they move themselves and I hope to oil their wheels and take the bugs off their windshields. I had an introduction to Acceptance Commitment Therapy via an introductory day plus extensive reading related to its use in building resilience in the workforce. From my vantage point, its exciting and full of potential. My hope is to use ACT as the ground for my practice in this general role. The service is a new one so, as yet, I am without clients so it is a great chance to learn from the ground up. My clients are likely to be people who have been getting a service for many years from psychiatric services with varying degrees of satisfaction (and varying degrees of 'service' for that matter!).
First thought, find a supervisor of sorts. I put the word out to the local mindfulness SIG for a nurse with an interest in ACT or mindfulness based approaches. The response:- no nurses at least local to me. It's an old story, nurses closest to the real life of clients but not necessarily taking the opportunity to work psychologically to promote healing...
Anyway, a 14 month old baby is calling for immediate (and I mean immediate) assistance. I hope to keep a sporadic blog of further developments as I move from here to there.