Burnout A Group Analytic Understanding: Creative & Destructive Group Forces

Working in a healthcare service is a bit like taking a boat out into the high seas. The more competent the crew is with the rigging, the better able they are to face the changeable weather. Although even the best boats and crew cannot survive some storms.

Storms come in various forms. Possibly from the trauma of a specific incident such as death of a patient, a member of staff or catastrophic errors in care. Equally, the chronic chaotic politic surrounding the NHS coupled with uncontained large group dynamics and relentless attempts at 'improvement' has left a common experience of burnout and pockets of toxic work environments or teams working in cultures of despair and professional loneliness.

Staff know when their ship is in poor weather and fear of a wreck can spread like contagion throughout an organisation in distress. When this happens, the focus of clinicians is taken up by the anxiety of their situation. People will work together to squash diversity of thought and with the hope that sailing confidently in a particular direction will relieve some tension. People start making decisions based on what ‘feels right’ rather than on what the evidence says.

Informed by group analytic ideas, this training guides participants into an understanding of the creative and destructive large group forces at play in NHS services and how these competing tensions contribute to provider burnout.

Within the training we will identify particular group processes that can help us understand and address potential obstacles to group functioning and allow for greater possibility of both avoiding burnout and/or recovery from it.

This training day will be led by Dr Libby Nugent(Clinical Psychologist & Group Work Practitioner of Psychoanalysis).

Issues for exploration in the training include:

• What is Burnout and how does it manifest in Groups

• What Happens in a Group - The Matrix and Group Development

• Working Together in a Group - Staying with the Group Task

• Trauma in Groups - Location of Disturbance

• Protecting Space and Creating a Culture of Support - Group Attachment

It is expected that this training will give you skills in refelcting on the experince of burnout - what it is, how it occurs and what can both help prevent and also effect recovery. Also that it will encourage you in developing your capacity to think more group analytically about health care services. There will be a focus on critical thinking about conscious and unconscious aspects of group dynamics.

The day is divided into a welcome session and three seminars. Each seminar will involve a presentation of the main themes for discussion, followed by a reflective space for the group to explore the material together.

Schedule

9:30 - Welcome and Hellos. A space for the group members to share what brings you here, and discover who are we in the room with. Tea and Coffee, Fruit and pastires provided.

10:00 - What Happens in a Group

11: 15 - BREAK.

11:45 - Trauma in Groups and Location of Disturbance

13:15 - BREAK (Lunch is not provided, but there is a cafe in the building and shops locally).

14:15 - Trouble Shooting Burnout

15: 25 - Final Reflections and Goodbyes

15:30 - Home time

A PDF copy of the presentations and an Attendance Certificate will be sent following the event.

Date: FRIDAY 31st MAY 2024

Venue: Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham, England, B12 9QH

WHO IS THIS TRAINING FOR?

This training is for anyone in healthcare who is interested in understanding burnout and group analytic psychology. They may be of particular interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses and psychotherapists and other mental healthcare professionals.

If you would like to join the mailing list regarding the groups I run please contact me at: [email protected] and mention this group.

RECOMMENDED READING

The traumatized group, Chapter 10 IN The Groups Book, Psychoanalytic Group Therapy: Principles and Practice, including The Groups Manual, A treatment manual, with clinical vignettes, London, Karnac, pp.175 – 191

Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist, 64, 515-526.

Malda-Castillo, J., & Anderson, D. (2022). Swimming in the waters of a sinking National Health Service (NHS): A group analytic perspective. Group Analysis, 55(1), 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0533316421997760

Novakovic, Aleksandra and Vincent, David. (2019). Group Analysis: Working with Staff, Teams and Organizations (The New International Library of Group Analysis) 1st Edition.

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 369-381.

Spinelli WM, Fernstrom KM, Britt H, Pratt R. "Seeing the Patient Is the Joy:" A Focus Group Analysis of Burnout in Outpatient Providers. Fam Med. 2016 Apr;48(4):273-8. PMID: 27057605.

Speaker:

Dr Libby Nugent is a Clinical Psychologist & Group Work Practitioner of Psychoanalysis. She originally specialised in complex trauma, working in sexual health and HIV and also in chronic pain. She now works with individuals and groups in private practice. Her doctoral thesis was examining the processes involved in inter professional collaboration in CAMHS and she has a strong interest in Jungian and group analytic psychoanalysis. She is trained as a group work practitioner of group psychoanalysis and is currently in training to become a group psychoanalyst.

For the past eight years much of her work is to provide reflective spaces for both members of the public and also professional groups such as senior clinicians and pre-clinically qualified psychologists; Providing creative ways to think deeply about ourselves, each other, our society and the many identities we live.

She runs two long term reflective practice groups in her private practice and provides supervision to facilitators of reflective practice groups in the NHS.

She is registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).

*Refund: Tickets are non-refundable.

Host or Publisher DR Libby Nugent