A solution focused consideration of cyberchondria

In this chapter, the authors consider the digital space and its technologically enabling effects on clients suffering from cyberchondria. Anonymised accounts are used to explore how, in the digital space of cyberchondria, rational people like Paul, Simon, and Tracy are broken down into assembly of compulsive behaviours and anxiety, always with an escalating nature. Using solution focused techniques like ‘the miracle question', ‘exception seeking', ‘problem free talk', and ‘detailing scales', the authors share their experiences of the murder and snake oil that is cyberchondria. They review how the literal and hypothetical ideals of solution focused practice offer new perspectives to the treatment of cyberchondria as clients require not logic but hope to retake control of their post-cyberchondria recovery

Collaborative components of solution focused flexible learning: a case study

This paper suggests that solution-focused flexible learning has a number of collaborative components, including fluidity, adaptability and a future-focused perspective which dispute the traditional ideals of universal standards and easily transferrable matrixes. The session explores these components and how co-authoring with students looks in practice using a case study of a Level 6 undergraduate module. The lessons learnt suggest that flexible learning requires constant negotiations between students, academics and systems in which solution-focused skills achieve more satisfying flexible learning environments

Resisting to Exist & the Subtle Invisible Protest: 6 Solution Focused Tactics about Challenging Behaviour

According to Young Minds [1] ‘everyone gets angry sometimes’. Their website offers a number of de-escalating strategies, including staying calm, managing responses and setting limits to help young people who most deem resistive. Yet, Young Minds are not alone because such logical advice is ubiquitous in the literature about challenging behaviour despite the fact that in our experience when faced with high states of arousal, most young people tend to act first and deal with the consequences later. It’s not that they are stupid or non-caring, but they are human capable of great feats as well as stupidity. The same is true for any claims that solution focused (SF) conversations can put right the several decades of psychological theory suggesting resistance requires logic and better cognition. By giving the correct thinking skills, young people will walk away from risk, avoid physical confrontation, handle challenging situations like logical thinkers, and generally discount that the process of growing up is part of the challenge. It is with this in mind that over recent years in our current SF practice (with staff group supervision) we have examined the concept of ‘resistance’ and how it can be put to use as a process of collaboration. To do this, we have revisited SF theory that preoccupied many of its pioneers during the 1980’s and 1990’s and attempted to make it useful for the early 2020’s for professionals having conversations with young people, who, in traditional models, are labelled challenging. We want to introduce key differences of solution focused practice and how Anita started to formulate a 6D-SF model (details, dynamics, dimensions, dispositions, dislocations, descriptions) for contemplating how groups of professionals relate to each other and are triggered by challenging behaviour. We do not claim to have proof, logic or exactness on our side, but we’re happy to suggest how our resistance mirrors what many of the staff teams feel and describe when working through their work

Best Hopes to Preferred Futures: Translating Burnout with Nursing Orientated Solution Focused Conversations

The authors are trained nurses who have worked with, researched and taught vulnerable groups in mental health and learning disabilities in a variety of settings, and like many health and social care professionals, also experienced the effects of burnout. In this article, they explore solution focused (SF) conversations and their use in the issue of burnout in nursing. First, the authors consider the current literature on nursing burnout to set a scene for appreciating how SF offers a different conversational approach for nurses. Second, particularly, concepts of ‘best hopes’, ‘preferred futures’ and other useful techniques of ‘difference’ aim to help nurses re-evaluate burnout. Once practitioners begin to translate some of the SF theory into conversational practice, they can build a different relationship with what it means to be burnt out. And third, the authors offer a few figures and infographics on how to translate SF conversations to nurses who, given the chance, are more than capable of ‘ferrying themselves’ and others through the murky waters of burnout.</p

Two psychiatrists, three boat builders and a million gap hunters: the choices we make in literature reviews

Throughout our education and beyond, we keep on hearing how literature reviews are an essential and, as such inevitable part of academia. So far, we agree. Literature reviews fulfil many pragmatic roles in science, research and teaching. In addition, many academics go as far as to say that searching literature has the purpose of finding a gap in knowledge. This is where we take a different view on the role of literature reviews, the nature of knowledge and their presentation in the 21st Century. This article aims to rethink what we researchers understand by the ubiquitous term ‘gap’ when reviewing the literature. It introduces the unchartered works of two psychiatrists (Pyotr Borisovich Gannushkin 1875-1933 and Grunya Efimovna Suhareva 1891-1981) who primarily published in Russian and therefore remained hidden from the English-speaking literature and as such demonstrate how the notion of ‘the gap’ is not all it appears to be. Principally, if the ‘gap’ is a question of presence and absence of evidence, as is the view of the gap-hunter then, we offer the metaphor of the boat builder and the activity of noticing literature. We will summarise in 10 points how our boat building as a genealogical model shares many similarities to translating texts from Russian, we learnt from Gannushkin’s and Suhareva’s work in autism

‘Don’t just travel’: thinking poetically on the way to professional knowledge

This paper describes how the medium of ‘found poetry’ is incorporated into a doctoral programme for nurses, educators and allied health and social care professionals at the start of their various doctoral journeys. It advocates a narrative practice approach to issues of researcher identity and reflexivity. ‘Finding’ the poems begins with the creation of collages as representational anchors for students to talk about themselves, their professional practice, their hopes and expectations of the doctoral experience, and their research ideas. (Re)presenting their transcribed talk as poetry involves culling and playing with words, phrases and segments, making changes in spacing, lines and rhythm to arrive at an evocative distillation (Butler-Kisber, 2002). This process enables each person to bring stories and/or fragments of experience into critical engagement with others. Poetic thinking functions pedagogically, helping students find a critical voice to enliven and hone their reflexive writing in relation to their doctoral experience and their research positioning. Arts-based methods of inquiry are an ongoing topic of interest in research communities. Found poetry is a useful starting point to explore creative means by which research participants can recount their stories, and equally, by which researchers can witness and disseminate what they have to tell.self funde

Best Hopes to Preferred Futures: Translating Burnout with Nursing Orientated Solution Focused Conversations

The authors are trained nurses who have worked with, researched and taught vulnerable groups in mental health and learning disabilities in a variety of settings, and like many health and social care professionals, also experienced the effects of burnout. In this article, they explore solution focused (SF) conversations and their use in the issue of burnout in nursing. First, the authors consider the current literature on nursing burnout to set a scene for appreciating how SF offers a different conversational approach for nurses. Second, particularly, concepts of ‘best hopes’, ‘preferred futures’ and other useful techniques of ‘difference’ aim to help nurses re-evaluate burnout. Once practitioners begin to translate some of the SF theory into conversational practice, they can build a different relationship with what it means to be burnt out. And third, the authors offer a few figures and infographics on how to translate SF conversations to nurses who, given the chance, are more than capable of ‘ferrying themselves’ and others through the murky waters of burnout

Resisting to Exist and the Subtle Invisible Protest: Six Solution Focused Tactics about Challenging Behaviour

According to Young Minds, ‘everyone gets angry sometimes’. Their website offers a number of de-escalating strategies, including staying calm, managing responses, and setting limits to help young people who most deem resistive. Yet, Young Minds are not alone because such logical advice is ubiquitous in the literature about challenging behaviour despite the fact that in our experience when faced with high states of arousal, most young people tend to act first and deal with the consequences later. It is not that they are stupid or non-caring, but they are human, capable of great feats as well as stupidity. The same is true for any claims that solution focused (SF) conversations can put right the several decades of psychological theory suggesting resistance requires logic and better cognition. By giving the correct thinking skills, young people will walk away from risk, avoid physical confrontation, handle challenging situations like logical thinkers, and generally discount that the process of growing up is part of the challenge. It is with this in mind that over recent years in our current SF practice (with staff group supervision), we have examined the concept of ‘resistance’ and how it can be put to use as a process of collaboration. To do this, we have revisited SF theory that preoccupied many of its pioneers during the 1980s and 1990s and attempted to make it useful for the early 2020s for professionals having conversations with young people, who, in traditional models, are labelled challenging. We want to introduce key differences of solution focused practice and how our research started to formulate a 6D-SF model (details, dynamics, dimensions, dispositions, dislocations, descriptions) for contemplating how groups of professionals relate to each other and are triggered by challenging behaviour. We do not claim to have proof, logic, or exactness on our side, but we are happy to suggest how our resistance mirrors what many of the staff teams feel and describe when working through their work