Patient help: enhancing UCL psychology training

The

ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/cehp" target="_self">UCL Research Department of Clinical, Education and Health Psychology has taken an innovative step to enhance its renowned doctoral course in clinical psychology - by involving mental health service users in designing and delivering training.

The UCL doctoral course in clinical psychology is the largest of its kind in the country and vastly oversubscribed. In recent years, mental health service users - anyone with direct experience of using psychology services, as client, relative or carer - have come in for two three-hour lectures over the course of the doctorate to talk about their experiences of mental health services.

The lectures provide students with personal accounts of living with mental health problems and of caring for someone who experiences major difficulties such as dementia. The lectures are also an opportunity for service users to describe how the attitudes and skills of health professionals have a profound impact on chances of recovery.

Dr Katrina Scior, Academic Director of the course, explained the reason for expanding the service users' involvement: "The feedback we were getting from students about these sessions was so positive that we started looking at ways to get service users more involved on a more regular and long-term basis."

Thanks to funding from UCL's Beacon Bursary scheme, service users from the local community have become involved in shaping and delivering more aspects of the course since January 2009. They are actively involved over the full duration of the course and spend more time working with trainee clinical psychologists in a variety of ways, including lecturing and teaching sessions on engaging with patients and assessment, advising on the course curriculum and helping assess potential students' personal suitability for the course.

Current student Anna Ruddle explained the benefit of the increased interaction with mental health service users: "Having service users and carers come in brings to life material in a way that I don't think even the best lecturer could. It is invaluable to the training process and has bought me closer to the experiences of real people."Elizabeth Holford, who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia, has been a service user for over 30 years. She has taken part in various sessions throughout the programme, both lectures and small group teaching, and sits on the course's service user and carer committee.

Elizabeth believes that this scheme gives clinical psychologists a better understanding of how their approach makes a major difference to service users' recovery and wellbeing.

She explained: "My aim, by using real examples from my experience, is to encourage the trainees to think about all aspects of interaction with the patient - including small but hugely important details such as eye contact, opening dialogue and even how dress code can affect the chances of a therapeutic relationship developing. For example, I try to convey to them the anxiety surrounding the 'make or break' feeling of a first appointment with a clinical psychologist, for a service user who has been waiting maybe eighteen months (or as in my case 30 years) and for whom this feels like their last chance of getting help."

In terms of overall benefits of the scheme, Elizabeth said: "When out in real working life in the NHS and faced with helping service users to recover, hopefully the perspective the psychologists have gained from first-hand accounts from service users while training will equip them with confidence to make good judgments and to act on the basis of humanity as well as sound academic training."

Dr Scior is keen to continue the cycle of service user involvement beyond the lifetime of the Beacon-funded project, by discussing with her final-year students how they might involve service users in their future work and service development once they have qualified. She is also hoping to increase the number of service users on the committee, who will do so based on their direct experience of clinical psychology services either as a carer for a patient.

If you would like to find out more about becoming involved in the course as a service user, please contact Katrina Scior for more information at k.scior@ucl.ac.uk.

By Neil Rodger, UCL Corporate Communications

UCL context

The UCL Research Department of Clinical, Education and Health Psychology is one of the premier research groups in the field of psychology applied to mental and physical health and education in the UK, and works to drive the agenda of professional psychology training, particularly in educational and clinical psychology. It is part of the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, which undertakes world-leading research and teaching in mind, behaviour, and language. The division brings together researchers in a range of disciplines such as cognition, neuroscience, linguistics, education, communication, medicine, health, phonetics, and development to understand both basic and applied problems.

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