psychiatry-nursing-psychiatry-2019-scientifictracks

Page 29

Volume 2

Journal of Psychiatry and Mental Health Research

Psychiatry Nursing & Psychiatry 2019

June 17-18, 2019

Psychiatry & Mental health Nursing

Psychiatry and Mental Health

June 17-18, 2019 | Rome, Italy

World Congress on

Global Experts Meeting on

Working with the nursing staff on an acute psychiatric admission ward

Antonio L S Fazio

Italian Psychoanalytical Society, Italy

The Problem:

Psychiatric nurses working in an acute psychiatric admission ward, in a Central London

teaching hospital, appeared to be under an enormous amount of psychological stress, with no support, and

very little training. They seemed to be part of a more general institutional failure to take care of them.

Intervention suggestion:

The high burn out risk to which the nursing staff seemed to be exposed, indicated

that the help of an external consultant as a group leader, could probably help and support them through

regular weekly staff groups. This paper is a clinical description of the main themes, challenges and issues,

which emerged and were worked through in such a group, which lasted for about 7 years, uninterruptedly,

and took place about 20 years ago. The group was run along psychoanalytically oriented lines, and within

a group-analytic approach and framework. A central role in this work was played by the elaboration of the

countertransference. This allowed the conductor to survive a very difficult situation. The projections which

were being thrown onto him, allowed him to understand better how the nursing staff had been feeling,

reflecting on his own emotional resonance. At the beginning of the group, the atmosphere was characterised

by chaos, confusion, and negative transference on the conductor.

Conclusions:

Through time, the general climate began to shift into something radically different. The

transference on the conductor became much more positive, and even staff who had never appeared before

to our meetings, began to active participate in all the sessions, including the consultant psychiatrists, the

pharmacist and the social worker. The atmosphere became much closer to a therapeutic community, and a

much more integrated multi-disciplinary team, than it had ever been before. People were now much more able

to take risks with one another, and to disclose very personal feelings.

Biography

Antonio L S Fazio, after his M.A. in Sociology at Trento’s University (Italy,1969), was trained as psychoanalyst in London, at the Institute

of Psychoanalysis, (1978). Back to Italy, he became Full Member of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, and later child and adolescent

psychoanalyst. He is also an Italian registered psychologist, on its psychotherapy section list. He also studied in London at the Institute

of Group Analysis, in the seventies. He has worked extensively in the UK at Shenley Psychiatric Hospital, Claybury Hospital, University

College Hospital London, Sutton Child Guidance Clinic. He has chaired the British Association of Group Psychotherapist first, and later

a group psychotherapy Italian association “Il Cerchio”, part of the Italian confederation of psychoanalytical group research associations

“COIRAG”. At UCH he was clinical associate in charge of the group dept. of the outpatient psychiatric and psychotherapy ward.

Supervision, institutional work, groups and family work have been his main clinical interests. He now works in Roma, Italy.

J Psych and Mental Health Research, Volume 2