‘Meet the Team’ events are planned for each of the three wards at Cygnet Hospital Derby with the first event for carers of the female service users on Alvaston Ward, Derby’s specialist personality disorder service. The ladies on the ward got involved by making soaps, posters and artwork to decorate the meeting room in which the event was to occur. They also baked cakes and made miniature cheesecakes which were very well received by all.
After starting with an informal buffet lunch the day consisted of a number of presentations given by different members of the Multi-Disciplinary Team. For example, the psychology team did a talk on the different types of psychological interventions used on the ward. Meanwhile, the lead consultant on the ward, Dr Elizabeth Gethins touched on a number of topics including diagnosis, understanding Personality Disorder, co-morbid diagnoses, the three basic types of medication including their uses and side effects, physical health matters (including diet) and long term prognosis. Presentations were also given by the nursing team, social work department and occupational therapy team.
During each talk carers had the opportunity to ask a range of questions and seemed particularly interested in the therapies and in how they could support their loved ones to use the skills they were developing. The psychology department kindly offered to run a series of hour long sessions for carers in the future to provide more in depth overviews of the therapies and to enable carers to understand how they can become involved in a supportive manner. This offer was gladly accepted and the psychology team are genuinely as excited about providing these sessions as the carers are about attending them.
The final session of the event was aimed at supporting carers to recognise that we understand how traumatic things have often been for them in their role of caring about the service users. The session identified that carers too need time to recover and highlighted five stages of recovery including: Feeling Stuck, Glimmer of Hope, Preparing for Change, Rebuilding and Growth. Each stage was discussed and carers identified with the stages as they had approached them.
The event proved to be a tremendous success and many carers said that they had never felt so well informed before. Some even agreed to come and participate in a Carers Working Party to co-develop a Carers Protocol for the hospital (this is due to commence on July 3rd). Meanwhile future ‘Meet the Team’ events for Litchurch Ward and Wyvern Ward are being planned for 23rd and 24th July respectively.