Title: Health Care Assistants Conference London Taking it in your stride maintaining your own self care Mat
1Health Care Assistants Conference
LondonTaking it in your stride - maintaining
your own self careMatthew Rice
2Session outcomes
- Understand the concept of self care and why it is
important - Explore the concept of support
- Identify the physical, emotional and behavioural
consequences of stress and the different ways of
managing it. - Introduce the concept of reflective practice
3What does self care mean?
- ..the care taken by individuals towards their
health and well being, and includes the care
extended to their children, family, friends and
others in neighbourhoods and local
communities.. (DoH, 2005)
4Self care includes
- Staying fit and maintaining good physical and
mental health - Meeting psychological and social needs
- Preventing illness and accidents
- Caring for minor ailments and long term
conditions.
5Self care and the HCA role
- So what are the challenges?
6Support - why is it important?
- To ensure you work within your level of
competence - To ensure accountability to the needs of your
employer - To promote learning and development
- To help you manage the emotional demands of a
range of potentially very complex situations - To ensure safe, ethical and professional practice
7The four levels of support (Stoltenberg
Delworth, 1987)
- Level 1 - characterised by a level of dependency.
At this stage the learner is fairly novice and
can feel anxious and insecure in their role. The
learner is very dependent upon support which
needs to be clearly structured. - Level 2 - characterised by a fluctuation between
dependency and autonomy. Mistakes are learnt
from by reflecting, analysing and evaluating.
Support at this stage needs to be less didactic
to enable problem solving. Feeling deskilled is
quite usual at this stage.
8 - Level 3 - an increase in self confidence, with
conditional dependency on the supporter.
Approaches are adapted and responsive to the
particular context. There is less emphasis on
learning about the new skill or competence. - Level 4 - characterised by personal autonomy,
insightful awareness, personal security and an
ability to confront personal and professional
problems. May provide support for more novice
learners. This stage is about deepening and
integrating existing knowledge.
9Think of a skill you are developing
- What is the level of support you require?
- Where do you get this support from?
- How effective is the support?
- What would make it even more effective?
10Stress and you
- Take a moment to think about how you react in
stressful situations - What physical reactions do you notice?
- What emotional reactions do you experience?
- What behavioural changes do you notice?
11What do you do to take care of you stress?
12Ways of coping with stress
- Palliative - helpful in getting us through
difficult times but can also lead to other
problems. Examples include smoking, eating,
spending money etc. - Indirect - These methods use up the adrenaline
released but they do not directly tackle the
problem so the symptoms return. Examples include
exercise, yoga, massage, sport, taking a hot bath
etc. - Direct - These ways involve acknowledging the
problem and directly working on it. Examples
include problem solving, talking to others,
assertiveness training, reflective practice.
13Top tips for taking care of stress
- Understand your stress, remember some stress is
positive and can make you perform better. - Develop a healthier lifestyle and healthier diet.
- Express how you feel.
- Think proactively about the work situations you
find yourself in. - Try out assertiveness techniques - saying No!
- Identify the triggers at work, speak to your line
manager and other trusted colleagues - and get
the balance right between work and play!
14Reflective Practice (Schon, 1983)
- Reflection-in-action - dealing with situations
as they occur in the moment. Decision making is
immediate and based on previous experience. - Reflection-on-action - takes place after the
event where you can look back in hindsight and
review the situation. The most common type of
reflection.
15Why is reflective practice important?
- It develops critical thinking
- It increases self confidence and self awareness
- It can help link theory to your practice
- It helps us to learn from doing
- It increases our ability to problem solve
- It enhances personal and professional development
- It is about taking things in your stride and
maintaining self care.
16Gibbs Model of Reflection (1988)
Description What happened?
Action Planning What will you you do differently
next time?
Feelings What were you thinking and feeling?
Evaluation What was ve / -ve about the situation?
Analysis What sense do you make of the situation
now?
Conclusion What have you learned?
17Acknowledgements
- Thanks to Kath Sharman, Ayesha Dost, Anna
Lynall and everyone else involved in the
development of resources for the WiPP Self Care
for People Project, all of which have informed
the content of this workshop. - For more information about the Self Care for
You Programme please visit the WiPP website