Counselling Skills In Palliative Care

Description

This book is aimed at people working in palliative care, helping patients and families to manage and live with chronic and progressive illnesses where treatment is no longer aimed at a cure.

Palliative care professionals are encouraged to work holistically, viewing themselves and their relationships with patients as significant therapeutic resources in their own right. The authors argue that sensitive counselling skills need to be used effectively by all palliative workers, not just by counsellors.

This text discusses the place of counselling skills using an integrative biopsychosocial model of family systems medicine, taking into account interactions between family life cycles, social conceptions of illness and treatment, the psychosocial typology of particular diseases, and family/professional belief systems. Each chapter considers counselling skills in relation to the overall care system (including the professional team and the family), not just the patient with the disease. Ideas are explored through clinical vignettes of common scenarios in palliative care.

Author description

John Davy is a Chartered Counselling, Educational and Health Psychologist, and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. His interests include the application of systemic therapies in medical settings, and supervision across professional boundaries. John works part-time in the NHS with older adults. He is a post-graduate tutor and research supervisor at City University in London, where he is also researching towards a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology on clinical supervision in palliative care.

Susan Ellis has ten years experience in palliative nursing and is an experienced Clinical Supervisor. It was through her nursing experience that she became interested in the individual's reaction and response to illness, anxiety and repeated loss. This led to an exploration, through reflective practice and self-awareness, of the individual make-up of the health carer and how their personal and professional techniques would enhance or impinge upon patient care. She is currently employed as Lecturer, Manager and Co-ordinator of Saint Francis Hospice's education services in Romford. As part of her MSc in Supervisory and Reflective Practice, she is in the process of researching the impact of Clinical Supervision upon therapeutic relationships.