Bringing Coaching Psychology to Nursing

Workshop Report

Coaching 360 – preceptorship and leadership development for registered nurses in Hong Kong, 19th December 2012

135 registered nurses from different hospitals and Universities attended the above workshop, which was arranged by the Hong Kong College of Education and Research in Nursing. This was one of the direct outcomes from my keynote at the 3rd International Orthopaedic Nursing Conference in Malta last October, where I was invited to give a talk/workshop at The United Christian Hospital in Hong Kong (See the previous conference report). My aims were twofold: to promote coaching psychology (UEL MSc Programme in particular) in Hong Kong and in the health sector which forms part of a wider initiative of promoting coaching psychology for nursing. From the hospital’s perspective, the workshop aims to show how coaching psychology can be used to 1) train and develop preceptors to become more effective in coaching the preceptees in the preceptorship programme; 2) develop leadership quality in both junior and senior nurses so that they can readily implement new nursing initiatives.

Knowledge transfer - Opportunities for nurses to develop coaching skills

The preceptorship and leadership development were the two major aspects identified as potential coaching applications. Preceptors are registered nurses (with minimum two years of clinical experience) who are responsible to guide, teach and coach the preceptees ( nurses who have just graduated from the institute and is not familiar to the clinical environment). In this preceptor-preceptee relationship, different approaches may be used in coaching and mentoring the preceptee. Coaching psychology can also help junior staff to facilitate new nursing initiatives which may be applicable to their clinical area.

Outcome

1. Evaluation: User satisfaction survey – 135 evaluation forms were distributed after the workshop and 68 were returned. All participants (100%) agreed that the workshop had been run in a well organized manner; 97% agreed that materials in the workshop were presented clearly. Over 90% of participants agreed that the objectives of the workshop had been made clear. 91% of participants agreed that the overall subjects in the workshop were easy to understand and the workshop was practical for use in the workplace.

2. UEL student recruitment – 200 leaflets for the MSc Coaching Psychology Distance Learning (DL) Programme were distributed to the participating hospitals. After the workshop, one participant – Dr Iren Wong, Head of School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital (the former Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong) came and thanked me for the workshop. She subsequently applied and enrolled onto the MSc Coaching Psychology (DL) Programme, just in time to start in Semester B. There were a number of enquiries shortly after the workshop. It is expected the number of applications will follow for Semester A this September. Overall for Semester B, 13 new applicants have enrolled onto the MSc Coaching Psychology (DL) Programme (in comparison with Semester B last year, when there were 6) – this represents an overall increase by more than 100% in the number of DL students (well above the School’s target)! Together with the existing DL students, this brings the total number to 48.

Wider impact and future initiatives

1. Publication – the paper based on the Keynote at the Maltese conference was accepted and published by the International Coaching Psychology Review this Spring.

2. Esencija Sestrinstva First Nursing Symposium – I was invited to be a member of the Scientific Committee of the Symposium, and present a Keynote at the Symposium on 12 – 14 April 2013 at Marija Bistrica, Croatia.

3. The creative use of Moodle and the development of online learning project – In response to the above call, I have drafted two bids and sent them to the Subject Leader on Developing an online VLE Management System (VLE- MS) and Creation of a new Coaching Psychology short course for CPD to further advance the DL provision on Coaching Psychology and improve students’ learning experience. Further comments and support to take these forward are welcome.

4. Student Testimonials and future marketing - I have now received two testimonials from our former MSc students about the experience of their studies with UEL. I would welcome further advice from colleagues about how to take these forward and capitalise on this marketing opportunity.

Dr Ho Law PhD CPsychol CSci CMgr MISCP(Accred) AFBPsS; FCMI; FHEA

School of Psychology

Email: law2@uel.ac.uk

Date of the report: 09 February 2013

Collaboration, impact and media training event

I applied to attend an Open Central event named COLLABORATION, IMPACT AND MEDIA TRAINING at Senate House and was thrilled when I was allocated a place. I was less thrilled when I received the programme. The programme implied that the day would be mostly interactive with participants having to find partners to collaborate with and then form larger groups by marketing their ideas. This seemed quite a scary undertaking and I was nervous when I arrived at the event. However, the other participants, from a range of different universities, were all very friendly and warm. We soon got to know each other over the welcome coffee and I became less anxious. The first activity was to find a partner with whom we could develop a study idea. Initially there was a faint hint of desperation in the air as the chatting became more frantic but as most of the participants were social scientists it soon became apparent that we were all able to collaborate with the people sitting next to us. After spending some time expanding on our idea we then had to try and increase our group size from two to four. Although it sounded daunting it was in fact a really fun activity and a good insight as to how best to approach others when trying to build collaborative partnerships.

Following on from that we then had to complete different pathways to show the impact of our prospective study. This was a very informative exercise and I certainly considered lots of other pathways to impact that would not have occurred to me before. Lastly, we were shown how to create a podcast which was the chosen type of digital media because of the ease of which you can create a professional sounding product quickly and cheaply.  Podcasts are now becoming popular with lecturers who are able to record their sessions for students but, in addition, it was explained to us how podcasts can be put onto the internet to allow a much wider audience access to our work which is an important aspect when trying to increase impact by engaging the public with academic work. This activity was really enjoyable and we finished the afternoon by listening to each group’s podcast.  The ideas were wide ranging and fascinating, the podcasts humorous and lots of hilarity ensued. It was a great way to end a Friday afternoon.

I will remember this course as not only was it very informative and interesting but because it was a nice way to meet fellow PhD and Postdoc students from other institutions. Lunchtime was spent swapping experiences and ideas as well as admiring the unique interior of Senate House. Furthermore, this was one of the most fun courses that I have attended.

 Paula Booth

The impact of nicotine on cognitive functions

Within the field of smoking research, there is debate on the impact of nicotine on cognitive functions such as memory and attention. The most intricate part of the cognitive system is the 'executive functions' which generally co-ordinate a host of other functions and standard behaviour. The executive functions are the last to develop in adolescence and the first to start deteriorating in healthy ageing; they are also implicated in a range of other disorders such as Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Since 2004, we have been developing and refining a new test of executive functions using the School's virtual reality expertise (aka Tony Leadbetter). This new test known as JEF (the Jansari assessment of Executive Functions), looks like a computer game with the participant moving around an office environment completing tasks that an office temp might be asked to perform. These tasks have been designed to tap various aspects of the executive system and provide a profile of abilities that currently available clinical tests are unable to provide. In a collaborative study with an MSc student Dan Froggatt and two experts in smoking research, our own Lynne Dawkins and Trudi Edginton from Westminster University, we used JEF to look at smokers and nonsmokers who were either given a nicotine gum or a placebo gum to see the impact on their executive functions. The results demonstrated quite categorically, that without the nicotine, smokers perform relatively poorly and that with the nicotine gum, there is an improvement in performance which is generally to the level of non-smokers on a placebo gum. The effects were particularly marked for 'prospective memory' which is the ability to remember to do things in the future (e.g. turning the oven on in ten minutes time). This new paper will hopefully make a useful addition to our understanding of the impact of nicotine on cognitive functions. Further, the paper nicely adds to three other papers published by a collaborator, Cathy Montgomery at Liverpool John Moores University who has used JEF to look at the impact of ecstasy, alcohol and cannabis in three separate studies.

Ashok Jansari