Successful session sees staff learn more about personality disorder
The Trust recently helped over 60 members of staff to understand trauma informed personality disorder at a successful learning event.
Presented by senior advanced nurse practitioners Catherina Westwood and Carole Davies, the event focused on understanding personality disorder and complex trauma, and their links with negative childhood experiences.
The event also enabled people to find out more about what is meant by ‘trauma informed’, and to contribute their ideas and suggestions.
At the session, held at Fieldhead in Wakefield, attendees took part in a number of table discussions with topics including ‘What comes to mind when you think of a personality disorder?’ and ‘What’s needed for effective intervention?’
Currently, Catherina and Carole are working on a pathway document to streamline and improve care, and are working on identifying training needs for teams. The team has also linked in with the Kirklees carers’ forum with the hope of developing their own personality disorder carers group.
Catherina Westwood said: “Throughout all our work developing and considering the pathway we have consistently engaged with service users, carers, trust peer workers and experts by experience. In the future, we’re looking to expand the pathway/network with increased staff investment for training, and working towards developing trauma informed services focusing on staff wellbeing.”
Carole Davies said: “We aim to learn from existing work nationally in an effort to ensure good practice for our service users and staff and will look at developing support and education for carers. Our priority is to ensure we provide a consistently high standard of appropriate care and treatment for individuals diagnosed with a personality disorder or similar difficulties, this needs to be trauma-informed and take account of the service users previous experience and their journey so far when planning their care. Staff are enthusiastic about this work and have shown a high level of commitment to improving understanding and practice in this area.”
