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Brief psychotherapy by trainees under the new shift system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Olubukola Kolawole
Affiliation:
St Michael's Hospital, Warwick CV34 5QW, e-mail: [email protected]
Salman Mushtag
Affiliation:
St Michael's Hospital, Warwick
Satyadev Nagari
Affiliation:
St Michael's Hospital, Warwick
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Abstract

Type
Columns
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2006

Mace et al (Psychiatric Bulletin, January 2006, 30, 7-10) showed that significant improvements can be achieved by inexperienced psychiatric trainees providing brief psychotherapy under supervision.

Over the past 18 months we have each held full-time psychotherapy posts at St Michael's Hospital, Warwick and have provided brief (6-month) courses of psychotherapy to patients under supervision. This coincided with the introduction of the shift system at St Michael's Hospital and we each had 2.5 weeks of night duties on a 1 in 11 shift rota system during each 6-month placement. In addition to 12.5 days of annual leave this represented a significant interruption to the continuity of psychotherapy.

Continuity of treatment is at the core of psychotherapy (Reference McGauley and HumphreyMcGauley & Humphrey, 2003). Hence the new shift system may have a negative impact on brief psychotherapy treatment by trainees in the UK. It is important that future studies investigate this further.

References

McGauley, G. & Humphrey, M. (2003) Contribution of forensic psychotherapy to the care of forensic patients. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 9, 117124.Google Scholar
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