Today Kelly shares her story. Kelly works in CAMHS as a team leader and has worked in CAMHS for over 18 years both within the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Her passion and commitment shines through this blog.
Here is Kelly’s story.
‘There was never a question for me that I would become a Nurse from a very young age! I come from a long line of nurses on my father’s side – both grandparents, countless aunties and cousins have all chosen a career in nursing and having grown up surrounded by Nurses it was inevitable that I would also chose that path. I started my Children’s Nursing training in March 1999 at Foresterhill College of Nursing in Aberdeen. I had never considered working in Child & Adolescent Mental Health (and having grown up in a remote part of North Scotland did not even know that such a thing existed!) until I had a 4 week placement on the CAMHS day unit in the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital and loved every minute. I felt that the staff were able to have a real positive impact on the future outcomes of those young people who came to the unit, to help them overcome difficulties and help them to learn positive coping strategies. I decided then that my career would be in CAMHS and worked at getting a permanent position in the unit shortly after qualifying.
I have now been in CAMHS since 2000, worked in many specialities and roles and across England, Scotland and New Zealand (private and NHS) and I can honestly say that I love nursing in CAMHS as much now as I did as a student. My real passion is in young people’s eating disorders and I had the pleasure of being involved in the Surrey Young Peoples Eating Disorder Service from its inception so was involved in service development, promotion and delivery. As a Nurse it was a really exciting time to be involved in the development of such a crucial service, and activated my interest around moving into a management role. I have now been in a leadership role (Team Leader and now Clinical Service Manager) since 2013, while I miss the clinical contacts I love the complexities of the role, of shaping the service and being involved in promoting CAMHS and Nursing in a difficult and challenging climate.
What are the biggest challenges for nurses…..Trying to promote what Nurses are capable of in an inpatient setting (nurses tend to keep the ship running – manage difficult situations and keep things ticking over) - I always saw that Nurses were capable of so much more than that (another reason I moved into community!).
While in New Zealand I worked hard in a CAMHS inpatient Unit to show what we could be capable of by doing it (pushing the barriers as it were!) – working therapeutically with clients, challenging the views of the MDT, developing and delivering well thought out care plans that were collaborative and developing robust therapeutic relationships that facilitate and enabled young people to make positive changes.
We are in a time where nurses are at a real shortage nationally and we are missing out on what Nurses bring to a MDT and patient care – that holistic view, the ability to see things from a patient perspective, to be caring and nurturing but thought-provoking and focus on delivering good quality care (I’m not saying that other professions don’t do that but I would say this is definitely a nurses strength).
What would I tell future nurses?
It’s hard but so worth it! The rewards of seeing your clients improving and being able to live a better quality of life because of your intervention is the reason we come into this. Nurses are needed all over the world – a career in nursing can take you anywhere you want to go……
I’m proud to be a Nurse and would not change anything about choosing this path for myself all those years ago!’
We are proud to have you Kelly a great ambassador for nursing and CAMHS.