 |
Rosemary Burch is a specialist cancer nurse working within the NHS. She trained in group analytic psychotherapy at wpf Counselling & Psychotherapy from 1997-2000 and achieved her UKCP registration in 2002.
“I was running a support group for people with early stage breast cancer when a member of staff who had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer asked me to set up a specific group for women with secondary breast cancer - she had found David Spiegel’s research saying that people who went into group therapy lived longer,” said Rosemary.
“Having agreed to start the group I very quickly realised that I needed some training to cure my locked jaw – the group would start but I had an absolute terror of where to go next. Although I had done some previous training in individual cognitive analytic therapy, I had very little idea of how groups like this actually functioned.
“I think I went into the training with my eyes wide shut – I hadn’t really thought through what I wanted or needed, and simply chose wpf because the timetable was right. It was fascinating but also somewhat masochistic in terms of the workload, the stress, having to form a training group and keep it going. However it was a well taught course, I was very well supervised and I had an excellent training placement. In retrospect I was very lucky.
“The training has absolutely transformed the way I continue to co-run an extraordinarily difficult group. Over the 13 years of the group we have had around seventy deaths – the majority of people who leave the group do so because they die. That has been a real challenge of containment.
“Because of the training we are able to steer the group into deeper waters much more quickly, enabling people to address what they really need to talk about: how to approach death, how to talk to children about their illness, how to approach the upcoming loss and how to live creatively in this difficult space. We’ve learnt how not to block people, but instead how to support them and bring them up for air when needed. And, as facilitators, we’ve become much more comfortable in our own skins while doing so.
“Yes, I’m very glad I did the course. Not only for the impact on my own work but also because it has now sparked off a nationwide debate on similar services.”
Drawing on her experience of running breast cancer support groups, and doing the group training at wpf, Rosemary is now running a project in south east London to help others to run professionally-led groups for all types of cancer. The project is to establish groups, supervise, train and encourage the facilitators, and evaluate both the groups and the training, in order to provide evidence of what is good practice.
|
|
