Make all Health and Care Psychological #PsychologicalProfessionsWeek #PPsIntoAction

How Psychological Professionals can Change General Practice

"Make all Health and Care Psychological"

It is now ten weeks on since the launch of the National Vision for the Psychological Professions at the conference. To read about Day One of Psychological Professions Week, click here. To watch any session from the conference, click here.  More than 3,300 people took part, but to share the learning even more widely, we will be releasing a series of blogs over coming weeks, each describing one of the conference keynotes, which was linked to one of the commitments in the Vision. 

Day Three of #PsychologicalProfessionsWeek was tied to the planet ‘Make all Health and Care Psychological. Bob Kirk, Primary Care Dean for North West England, HEE, introduced the session, whereby delegates heard about two innovative projects offering psychological approaches in primary care and the view from general practice, presented by Cathy Byard and Miranda Budd. Sarah Dexter-Smith Chair of PPN North East, chaired this session and here’s what she had to say …

I chaired the Wednesday morning session which linked to pillar three about making all health and care psychological.  It was inspiring to hear about the different ways psychological professionals were working with colleagues in primary care.  Both to help those colleagues develop skills and but mainly to help people access the care they needed quickly and at a time and place that suited them. What struck me was how skilled psychological professions are in sitting with people in distress and carefully finding a way to help alleviate that alongside the person.  I was also struck by how much we can learn from primary care training about how to do meet with people quickly so that we provide good enough, in the moment responses rather than falling back on referrals to secondary care when they are not actually needed. The chat was lively and enthusiastic and with the breadth of psychological professions, this feels like a key area where we could have an impact.  The core message that came out towards the end was not to fall into discussing ‘which psychological profession’ but to hold onto our core shared skills of thinking psychologically about what individuals, families and systems bring. 

We want to invite you to take part too! Please let the world know what the psychological professions are doing - linked to the commitments in our collective vision.

Simply tweet #PPsIntoAction with a picture or a tweet showing what the psychological professions are doing where you are, to live up to these commitments.

What are you doing to "Make all Health and Care Psychological"?