The Arizona State Hospital (ASH) hosts monthly Lunch and Learn sessions to help employees stay up-to-date on current approaches to inpatient psychiatric treatment. This helps ensure every member of our team is providing consistent, high-quality care to the people we treat.
All ASH staff are trained on the following important principles of patient care and conflict intervention:
- Therapeutic presence and non-presence—Being attentive and engaged, hearing the person
- Remaining therapeutic—Being empathic, accepting, and genuine
- Modeling appropriate/professional behavior—Displaying the behaviors you want to see from others
- Social awareness—Paying attention to a person’s specific needs
- Personal reactions to patients—Noticing and managing your personal reactions to someone’s behavior and remaining focused on treatment
- Situations that involve setting limits—Letting others know what you are okay with and where you draw the line
- Responding to button pushing—Remembering that everyone is actively learning and doing their best
- Power struggles—Maintaining a treatment-centered mentality, managing your own responses and behaviors, and understanding a patient’s motivations and needs
- Moving forward from a challenging interaction—Decompressing, reflecting, consulting
As staff members who provide psychiatric care, we are always figuring out the best ways to apply interventions and interact with our patients. We often ask ourselves the following questions:
- What style of engagement will this person benefit from the most?
- How will this person best receive what I am saying?
- How can I best show that I care?
- How do I express things like empathy and validation?
- What are my limits? How do I set them in order to establish healthy boundaries, and at the same time encourage other people to do so?
- How do I figure out what this individual or group of people needs most right now?
- What do I need to prepare myself for my next patient interaction?
- How do I remain professional and in the best frame of mind to provide compassionate care?
The Arizona State Hospital is committed to providing care that will facilitate our patients’ successful transition to outpatient community settings. The hospital is a safe setting for patients to learn to manage their illness, build healthy interpersonal skills, and practice coping skills that will contribute to their successful integration into the community upon discharge. This commitment starts with our staff. By caring for ourselves and modeling compassionate and professional behaviors, ASH employees set an example for everyone in our care and in our community.
