Life Long Learning and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) are the
processes by which professionals, such as nurses, develop and improve their
practice.
There are many ways to address CPD: formally, through attending courses,
study days and workshops; or informally, through private study and reflection. Reading
articles in professional journals is a good way of keeping up-to-date with what
is going on in the field of practice, but reflecting and identifying what you
have learnt is not always easy. These questions are designed to help you to
identify what you have learnt from studying the article. They will also help
you to clarify what you can apply to practice, what you did not understand and
what you need to explore further.
1. At Eurostar (UK)Ltd mandatory medical are required for which jobs?
a) Train drivers, managers and engineering staff
b) Train drivers, train managers and engineering staff
c) Safety engineers, train drivers
d) Safety engineers, managers and drivers
2. What type of supervision does job sharing provide for the authors?
a) Group
b) Peer
c) Clinical
d) Network
3. What do you believe may be a problem with one-to-one peer supervision?
a) There is a danger that the personal support aspect will dominate
b) The opportunity of learning from a more experienced nurse is denied
c) It is not appropriate for inexperienced nurses
d) The two people may not get on
4. Public transport workers are at risk from
a) Suicides, verbal and physical assaults
b) Post-traumatic stress
c) Assaults
d) All of the above
5. For critical incident debriefing employees are offered an appointment
how long after an incident?
a) 2-3 hours
b) 10-12 hours
c) 24-72 hours
d) 2-4 days
6. What did the Paddington/Ladbroke Grove disaster help to highlight as
an important factor?
a) First aid training
b) Counselling
c) Sickness absence
d) Mental health
7. Who was employed to undertake a wellbeing audit?
a) Researcher
b) Counsellor
c) Psychologist
d) Manager
8. What methodology was used for the wellbeing audit?
a) Questionnaire and focus groups
b) Questionnaire and sickness absence statistics
c) Focus groups and interviews
d) Interviews and sickness absence statistics
9. What stress factors were stress management programmes and workshops
not necessarily addressing?
a) Individual
b) Managers
c) Departmental
d) Organisational
10. What is needed to provide a cost-effective occupational health
service?
a) Identify need, justify the reason and reference to business need
b) Focus on key business functions and confirm clear objectives
c) Undertake regular audits
d) A needs assessment
Feedback
1.
b); 2. b) One-to-one peer supervision takes place between two nurses of
equal status and is one form of "clinical supervision". There are
some nurses who feel that clinical supervision is a misnomer for the process,
especially if they are not in clinical practice, and would rather that the
process was called "professional supervision" or "professional
mentorship". 3. a) There are five main types of clinical
supervision and all have both good and bad points. Carry out a literature
search on clinical supervision, or read Look Back Move On, Clinical Supervision
For Nurses (RCN 1999) and write notes on both the good and bad points of each
type of supervision. Discuss with your colleagues what type of clinical supervision
would suite your area of work.4. d); 5. c) There have been a number of
articles in Occupational Health journal about PTSD and incident debriefing.
Revise your knowledge by rereading these articles. 6. d); 7. c); 8. a); 9.
d) The HSE produce a resource pack for management Mental well-being in the
workplace (1998; £25). It contains a mountain of information, help, support,
references and further reading on all aspects of mental health at work.
Encourage your organisation to purchase this pack and study its contents! 10.
a) Although the answer is a), a cost-effective OH service would have to
undertake a "needs analysis" in order to direct interventions, target
risk groups, and justify resource allocation (Naidoo and Wills, 2000, Health
Promotion, Balliere Tindall).
