🔖 PRESENTATION

Paper (parallel)

📆 DATE

Friday 11 Sep 2020

⏰ MELBOURNE TIME

9.00 – 11.00 am

⏰ LOCAL START TIME

time start

Ms Liz Greenway

Psychotherapist & Organisational Consultant, Organisation: Liz Greenway Psychotherapy and Consultancy Practice, UK

Liz Greenway has worked for more than fifteen years as a psychotherapist in GP surgeries, charities, and private practice with a broad range of individuals including those on the edge of society who are homeless, entrepreneurs, elderly, working professionals in government, law, health, charities, social care, education and corporate environments, actors, stay-at-home parents, family businesses. As a psychodynamic organisational therapist, integrative psychotherapist, and cognitive analytic therapy practitioner she has substantial experience across private, public, and voluntary sectors and in group relations.

Her organisational consultancy, reflective practice, and professional role consultation considers dynamic issues beneath the surface and relationships at work in context. She has a background in adult education. She is published in the International Journal of Organisational and Social Dynamics and received, for scholarly excellence, Best Paper Award from the University of Missouri’s Center for the Study of Organizational Change in 2014. She has a chapter in the recently published Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Unhoused Mind (Routledge, 2019). She has presented her work at various conferences. Additionally, she is a doctoral candidate in consultation and the organisation at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust for which the subject of her research is the impact of challenging work contexts on professionals in role, a concept of broad application in working life. She remains particularly interested in enabling environments to facilitate creativity, sustainability, and recovery.

⏰ DURATION

120 minutes

Doctor-In-The-Mind

Since this research was undertaken, the impact of the international pandemic of Coronavirus Covid-19 from March 2020 on General Practice in England has been deeply impactful, as I have heard first hand from GPs in Balint Groups which I co-lead. Amongst other changes, they have been almost solely communicating with patients remotely as usual medical practice had been altered to avoid the high risk of symptom contamination. Some GPs are keeping the doctor-in-the-mind alive in their elderly patient population with external visits and waving through windows. All of this means that everyday GP practice is somewhat suspended, but what was the nature of the doctor-in-the-mind before the resounding phrase ‘we are following the science’ became simultaneously a shield behind which politicians take refuge and a contentious arena which may have become invaded and exploited.

Having undertaken a small qualitative study for my doctoral research into the impact of the healthcare context on healthcare professionals in England, I tentatively developed a model which has multiple applications across different sectors in the current neo-liberal paradigm which dominates western democracies. Social defences were observed in General Practitioners, doctors in primary care, in response to the task of the clinical work, the role of running the small business of General Practice and the requirements of interacting with the wider healthcare system in relation to commissioning and developing clinical provision.

Healthcare is a complex weave of human needs from cradle to grave involving technological and pharmaceutical advances and interaction between patients and doctors in relation to these and also the neo-liberal political environment determining funding mechanisms, leaning into public expectations and influencing medical and social provision and their cultures. This paper explores these vital areas which deserve our psycho-social lens.

Day(s)

Hour(s)

Minute(s)

Second(s)

Session schedule

10 MINS

Introduction by Dr Carolyn Cooper

30 MINS

Paper presentation

15 MINS

Small group discussion; impressions of the paper and developing questions for the presenter

15 MINS

Discussion forum with the presenter; moderated for the speaker to elaborate their ideas

15 MINS

Small group activity or discussion ‘What does this paper tell us about working into the future?’

15 MINS

Discussion forum with the presenter; themes from the discussions

20 MINS

Whole Symposium across the papers reflections on the sessions

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Parallel Paper Presentations

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MS LIZ GREENWAY