Wendy Hawksworth

Project Partner: Wendy Hawksworth
VBP-Logo-v1-Small-with-White-Circle
Wendy Hawksworth
Nurse Educator Mental Health Brisbane Australia

Since completing my MA in Philosophy and Psychiatry in 2011 my eyes have been opened up to the possibility of a kinder practice. I work at the pointy end of psychiatry in an acute mental health area where there is a distinct gap between the rhetoric of recovery, self-determination and patient-centered care and the actual practice of control and coercion. For the last 4 years I have been involved in developing and teaching VBP to staff working in acute and community mental health. I have faced many hurdles and learnt many lessons from this ….least of all institutional practice is slow and reluctant to change. I am interested in how knowledge of VBP is transferred and sustained into practice. I am particularly interested in the role that clinical supervision could play in this.I am writing a training manual and reader for staff working in in-patient units with people experiencing a psychosis from a VBP perspective.

Preferred Contact

Location

Based in

Australia

Working in

Australia

Areas of interest in VBP

Values Blindness, Nursing, Interprofessional Education, Mutidisciplinary Practice, Team Work, Engagement, Changing Institutional Practice, Organizational Change, Acute Mental Health, In Patient Units, Community Mental Health

Related areas of interest

RecoveryCommunication skills, Decision theory, Ethics, Philosophy; Decreasing seclusion

Areas of healthcare expertise:

Acute Mental Health Care, Community Mental Health, Mental Health Education, Nursing

Publications

Applying Values-based Practice for People Experiencing Psychosis


For a new reading guide and training pack that provides the mental health worker with a step by step approach to Values-based Practice based on  practical scenarios  that support person centred care within inpatient units.https://www.pavpub.com/applying-values-based-practice-people-experiencing-psychosis/

https://pavpub.com/applying-values-based-practice-for-people-experiencing-psychosis


Read More

Permission to care


Andrew Blythe and Wendy Hawksworth

Permission to care was written in 2014 by Andrew Blythe and Wendy Hawskworth and originally presented as a conversation-in-progress at the 15th International Mental Health Conference at the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Andrew and Wendy both work in a mental health service in Brisbane, Australia: Andrew as a consumer consultant and Wendy as a nurse educator.

Permission to care is their story of exploring values within an acute inpatient unit and represents the early days of their work trying to understand Values-Based Practice. It illustrates their thoughts and conversations as they reflect on practice to consider, from a values perspective, the service in which they work. They use the four skills of Values-Based Practice—awareness, reasoning, knowledge, and communication—to frame their insights and consider how these are placed within current practice.

As a consequence, one of the difficulties they found of being values aware was a feeling of frustration and isolation because of the unreflective and often uncritical approach to care that they encountered. They hope this writing, by exploring different ways of knowing and expressing, will help others who are also facing similar challenges to feeling validated within their workplace.

Therefore, with no expectations other than to keep an open mind, the reader is invited to join Andrew and Wendy on their journey of exploration and reflection as they walk through the mental health unit.

Read More – for the full text of our conversation see:

https://valuesbasedpractice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/4-Permssion-to-care-final-version-for-VBP-website.doc