The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Assistant Psychologist Roles: What the BPS Says You Should and Shouldn't Do

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. What does the British Psychological Society say that an assistant psychologist

Starting point is 00:01:05 should be doing? What do they say they should not be doing? I am joined once again by Luke Meakin, an assistant psychologist. We are taking a look at the recent guidance put together by the BPS looking at how to recruit assistant psychologists. It is an invigorating, lively, really interesting and helpful discussion. I hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. It is my pleasure to bring you this close look at what goes on in the minds of qualified psychologists

Starting point is 00:01:47 and speaking to our guests who I have just recorded this episode with and you're just about to meet again. It just reinvigorates my passion for this podcast, it really does, that it's making a difference, that it's appreciated, that you are getting access to really important, helpful conversations that you may or may not be getting access to in your immediate work or learning environment, but that it can help shape you and your thinking and hopefully make your life working in mental health work better for you. Let's dive in and I will catch you on the other side. Hi, I just want to welcome back to the podcast, Luke Meakin, an assistant psychologist. Hi, Luke. Lovely to have you back.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Hi, Marianne. Thank you for having me back. It's a pleasure to be here again. Oh, I agree. I was like, you know, when you're preparing for a day and you sometimes think, oh, I've got to do that. Like today I was I was like oh I get to see Luke again so like it's a little stout shift isn't it like but I was really looking forward to seeing you so thank you for being here of course thank you it's great to be back and you know we're talking today again about assistant psychologists and since we met pretty much as soon as we'd met we messaged each other to say oh look there's some some guidance on the recruitment of assistant psychologists from the British Psychological Society now the BPS and obviously when we met for our audience

Starting point is 00:03:19 it was last week for us it was pretty much feels like a lifetime ago, but it was at the start of the summer. And we were looking at the Association of Clinical Psychologists guidance for assistant psychologists. So we thought it might just be a really nice idea to kind of just compare and contrast really. So we're not going to go over too much of what we've gone over before. So people, if they haven't watched the first one they might find it helpful to do that it's called what is an assistant psychologist and what do they do and if you're looking for it and it's like years since it came out it came out in october 2024 yeah i i think it was really quite um frustrating and confusing that it came out maybe one or two days after we recorded.

Starting point is 00:04:07 So it is definitely good to have this time to download it this morning whilst I was eating breakfast. But I couldn't do it from my tablet because you needed to be logged in. So you needed to be a BPS member to access that. And that doesn't feel that inclusive, really. Whereas the ACP one, I think I'm I'm writing saying was just a freely available online document so if anyone is working in a service and wanted to check what the BPS guidance is and they're not a member they can't and if anybody's looking to recruit but they're not a BPS member they can't necessarily

Starting point is 00:05:00 access that readily you know they might be able to contact the BPS and see if they can get a copy but yeah that was just a little bit of a heart sink moment so it delayed my processes but also made me think about people trying to do right you know it's very tricky yeah I think you're totally right is it kind of indicative of how the BPS tend to work. In my experience, you know, as you say, they put something out that's really helpful and they limit it straight away. And the website, I don't know if you go on there often, I tend to go on there maybe once a month

Starting point is 00:05:35 or if I'm trying to search particular documents, publications. It's quite a cumbersome website, but it can be depending on the device you're using. So luckily I was at work and I was able to get into it pretty easily but I think if I was on an iPad I think you use an iPad a lot if I was on an iPad I would have struggled so it's definitely a bit of a barrier in the before the first hurdles even jump yeah I think there is something about the restrictive element of BPS so I'd signed up for a course that I'd bought through them. And it's not a cheap course. And I hadn't realized when I bought it that I only get six months access. and kind of engage with it again or watch it when you've got more headspace or when you might be at

Starting point is 00:06:27 a different stage of your learning journey to to be able to take more from it and yeah that that was a little bit annoying in terms of access to I thought yeah yeah I found that when when applying for the extra sort of divisions the subdivisions so i think i'm a member of the clinical um psychology and um psychosis psychosis psychotic disorders i suppose and it's really really difficult to access those things on the website after paying for admission into the subdivision um like yourself like you just said if there's six months you've got access to that what if you need it in a year what if you haven't prepared enough for sort of finishing that training within the six months and you know it's it just seems like they shoot themselves in the

Starting point is 00:07:19 foot when they're trying to increase this inclusivity they're trying to increase awareness to the role and and bring more specific understanding from the wider industry into what psychologists do um it just it just seems a bit redundant at times but yeah let's let's try and give them the benefit of the doubt with this document i suppose absolutely so know, this isn't supposed to be an anti-BPS thing. We're just, I guess we're just being curious and compassionately critical and, you know, thinking about what we would think would be good enough, you know, in any circumstance, really, in the psychology profession. So for anyone who is just interested in our conversation or doesn't perhaps have access to Bps guidance yeah i think overall

Starting point is 00:08:05 actually from first read of it i was quite pleasantly surprised but um i do think we can we can get into quite a few things here but i was pleasantly surprised with the the depth of it but i think it missed the point on a few sections which i'm i'm sure you may agree with yeah um one of my one of my latter things that upset me was I was just getting into it I mentioned it just before we hit record but I was just getting into it and I was just at the point I thought I'm quite enjoying this and I was like on page 24 or something of a 36 page document and then I flicked over the page and then it was references like it was it was done and I was like oh I feel like I needed or was expecting like a little bit more yeah I know I was the exact same and it actually really helped me this morning because I was blocking out like another hour or

Starting point is 00:08:55 so to read it but yeah finished so I was like okay I'm gonna have to go and talk to some patients now which is which is good it's a positive. Exactly though, but when you realise you've got a 36-page document to read, you give that the appropriate time that a document like that requires, and then obviously actually you've over-read the pudding by about a third. But that said, when I opened the document to begin with, I liked the glossary, you know, I liked terms being clear. And later on during the document, it describes what it wants assistant psychologists to be called and what it would prefer that they weren't. And actually, it makes things less ambiguous. I think it makes things a bit clearer.

Starting point is 00:09:55 So basically, they'd like them to be called assistant psychologist, assistant educational psychologist and voluntary assistant psychologist. And really, those are the only three terms that they would they would like to be seen being discussed and I think that's really helpful because it you know I mean I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn then variety of different job roles that I see people having and sometimes I'm like well they sound more qualified than me like what is that I've never heard of that and then I look and see that they've actually done their psychology degree and that's it and it's like right and so sometimes I've actually spoken to people and said um you know what what is this job title and and how did that come about and they're like well that's what our service asks us to call ourselves and I sort of it feels a little bit it feels a little bit dodgy to me and actually it does make you sound very very qualified you know it's like psychology lead or um or psychologist in charge or

Starting point is 00:10:46 something like that. And I don't know, that sounds big. So yeah, for me, just this might empower people already in what is essentially assistant psychologist role to start that conversation with their employers about actually could we look to rename me in line or rename this role it's not just about person is it in line with the guidance from the British Psychological Society. Yeah I totally agree I remember in the last episode we did we spent quite a bit of time discussing the sort of common ambiguity of the role for various reasons and I do I totally agree that it's helpful the BPS have kind of said there's there's three pathways in which we would accept govern and assistant psych and with regards to the voluntary which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit because we spoke about it last time

Starting point is 00:11:44 the voluntary role they do say that we don't support that. However, we acknowledge it exists. So this is our recommendation. So I think it's really, really helpful to see them sort of clamping down and being more specific for those reasons you've just stated. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think the honorary role is a big conversation um and we will come back to it i'm sure so i think for me it also they said that and it's to to be an assistant psychologist you need to be a a psychology graduate which obviously then gives you the graduate basis for registration i get it wrong is it gbc or gbr am i i think i had gbr and we're

Starting point is 00:12:32 talking about gbc now are we now i've got like i get them mixed up they used to be something different so what is it and what was it i think it's gbc but I'm just checking my LinkedIn because... That's graduate basis for chartership though, isn't it? Yeah, so I have GMBPSS, which on the document, because I remember being really confused when the doctor application was asking for my titles, I was really confused. Have I got graduate basis for chartership? And apparently you do, which gives you the GMBPS but when you are at the level where you have passed through traineeship that's when you can use GBC

Starting point is 00:13:12 and then after trainee you're qualified so yeah it um for me it's it's clarifying what an assistant psychologist is and that an assistant psychologist must be a graduate um which then made me think well why are people advertising placement years as assistant psychologists posts because they ought not to be because actually that is against the bps guidance now yeah like who's leading who is it the bps is supposed to be guiding the industry and um i had a quick really quick look at some of the job applications for assistant psychologists after reading this document and whilst they're improving there's still there's still a few things that are not what the bps have advised in this um so it just begs me begs the question who is supposed to be governing whom and i don't know where this confusion is coming from um but it would it

Starting point is 00:14:17 would be nice to see everything sort of in the one path like this document and students they're not assistants like you say it would be dangerous kind of for them as well as the service to be given that responsibility when they're just at university because there's a big difference in skill level and competencies and and just personal development at that point yeah and I think for me, one of the things that shone out of this guidance was, this should be a development role. And even in cases where this is a voluntary role, I almost called it honorary, but I'm going to call it voluntary from now on. Because I think

Starting point is 00:14:58 honorary makes the company feel better about it, and perhaps makes the person feel better as well but it is a voluntary role and it said that it should be no more than basically one day a week volunteering whole time equivalent and that there should still be the same amount of requirements for supervision and that there should still be kind of job plans and progression happening as part of that role and you know you should still have a right to accrue toil obviously not paid time off but if you're doing over and above the time that the service have said they want you for you can take that time back and that you still have rights to unpaid annual leave and yeah for me that really

Starting point is 00:15:46 made me think about when I've been in services where there have been voluntary members of staff that sometimes it might just be like oh um oh so and so's not here tomorrow because they're on annual leave perhaps we could ask the honoree to come in with the natural fact that's not okay you know it probably never was, well it never was, but this firms that up more. This isn't just a supernumerary member of staff like you might have on an NHS ward to meet minimum numbers. This is a voluntary member of staff who cannot be counted in the numbers and actually there was even questions raised about whether a voluntary member of staff is definitely covered on the organisation's indemnity and that

Starting point is 00:16:32 that needs to be an explicit conversation whereas in my experience this is just not the case and a voluntary member of staff has just been exploited massively basically in a nutshell yeah totally i mean i haven't been around um the honorary role but it just screams exploitation because even if all those things were put in place like well i say that i I can't see how supervision or access to supervision um would happen with a seven hour shift I think it was seven hours or seven and a half I don't see access to that purely because of the pressures on teams and services I don't see them not being given extra responsibilities that they shouldn't be doing because as you know you've worked in the NHS and you're still close to it the pressures are the pressures and unfortunately

Starting point is 00:17:31 often everyone has to get lumped with things they shouldn't necessarily be doing which is what we were discussing last time which is why we wanted the extra guidance which I think this is helpful for but I still just don't understand why the honorary role exists, because it's exploitative, but it also cuts off a lot of the potential workforce that couldn't get into psychology. Like myself, I'm a white male, so statistically I'm of a privileged position. I couldn't do that. I couldn't work for free for a day.

Starting point is 00:18:06 So it must be cutting off a lot of people. So I don't see why the need exists still. And maybe you know more about that from a managerial service development point of view, NHS, why it would still continue existing. I don't know if you could speak upon that with the pressures as to why the role may exist still. I think it's because it's condoned because it's been established as a viable way of plugging service gaps. And there hasn't been enough of a stand against it. And actually, if I was still working in the NHS NHS I think I would be part of that stand I cannot ethically get behind asking people to work for free I can't I can't hold interviews for who gets the privilege of of coming to work with me for free and and paying um you know for their parking and their commuting costs and their lunch money and all of that.

Starting point is 00:19:10 So actually they're out of pocket. So I think hopefully this guidance and the ACP guidance before it starts to, and this podcast maybe too, starts to turn the tide on that a little bit yeah yeah it's good to see that they made several references throughout the document that the bps doesn't um agree with this role existing but given it exists and the pressures it exists we strongly recommend xyz so maybe that as you say is a start in the right direction and hopefully that gives people the platform to talk more about it such as this podcast and hopefully one day pretty soon we can get rid of it because I just I don't see the positives in it really and I think especially because there's

Starting point is 00:19:57 lots of mentions across the the guidance around equality diversity and inclusion and trying to kind of think about contextual factors, you know, they are recognising just how inaccessible the profession can be. And so to add that further tier of voluntary roles, you know, I was reading it thinking, if I've done a voluntary placement year, and I'm legally allowed to say that that was an assistant psychologist post and put that I've worked for nine months, whole time equivalent as an assistant psychologist, I'm going to have a significant advantage in gaining interviews for paid assistant roles um yeah just i think if you're not allowed to do that then you'd have to call yourself a psychology worker i don't know just a placement student like what would you call yourself in those circumstances because in my experience everybody tends to call themselves an assistant psychologist. Yeah, yeah, you're right. I've come across psychology assistants in, I suppose that was more private healthcare.

Starting point is 00:21:12 And they appeared sort of like half the role of an assistant psychologist, but that was used interchangeably over there. So I honestly don't know what you could be referred to as. And as you said, honorary is like a more positive spin. It's not an honorary position, is it? An honorary position is usually used for quite senior people, maybe in academic institutions. This definitely isn't that. It feels and seems like exploitative,

Starting point is 00:21:46 potentially grunt work where they shouldn't be doing that at all yeah and regardless of whether someone is voluntary or um paid you know they should be assisting with it with the work of at least one practitioner psychologist and i think sometimes that is just not the case is it sometimes these posts as we spoke about last time are advertised and the practitioner psychologist doesn't even work in the service that supervises them it's kind of super remote they might even only have one contact hour a week and that is not that is not a safe service and that is not an assistant psychologist role as this guidance understands it yeah yeah totally i don't know how you could achieve those things in one day and just as you were saying that i was just having a quick look back over the the guidance

Starting point is 00:22:37 and i've come to the job descriptions and person specifications and if you don't mind, I'll just read out the paragraph I highlighted. AP duties should broadly align with those held by a practitioner psychologist, like you mentioned, but they should be at a level proportionate to the nature of the role, should exclude management responsibilities, and should include increased supervision. So right there, that is at odds with the honorary and at least anecdotally with people I know who've worked in assistant roles they haven't achieved that. They should not be asked to take on roles that are significantly distinct

Starting point is 00:23:18 from typical practitioner psychologist roles that rotate with or are combined with non-psychologist responsibilities e.g. healthcare assistant roles which we've kind of just alluded to that could happen or are primarily administrative and then it goes on to recommend physical restraint is not part of the AP job role which may be a separate conversation but I think is really helpful to see that there absolutely I'd considered that paragraph as well and I don't know for me if you're working in an inpatient secure facility restraint is potentially everybody's role you know it's tricky I think if there's a core staff of nursing staff available to do it then that makes most appropriate sense but if you are there and there is severe harm happening to somebody you can't really say i'm not doing that because I'm an assistant psychologist can you? No I think I think you're right having worked in acute settings and I'm sure you have yourself

Starting point is 00:24:31 been around them yeah you would definitely hope there is a reasonably well staffed clinical team there and I suppose it was helpful for me when I came into my current setting, which is adult rehab services. I had similar questions about that because the environment is similar to an acute ward. It's not the same high security, but it's similar in nature. And it kind of made me think of my time on acute wards when I was a healthcare assistant and we would be responding and the advice was sort of the therapy team which psychology is included under shouldn't be responding because it severs that therapeutic relationship or potentially severs which until that moment I hadn't really thought of that I thought that was a great piece of advice

Starting point is 00:25:23 because we are seen as a bit differently and supposed to kind of add to the assistant psychologist role we are seen as an extra part of the clinical team but also a little bit different depending on the population we're working with we can get a bit closer to them we have the extra knowledge of the degree but we also have hopefully supervision from a professional or clinical qualified and we don't want to damage that therapeutic relationship however to your point if there was absolutely no one else around yes we I would be expected to help out and we should so maybe there could be an asterisk on the document alluding to what we're talking about sort of emergency situations maybe they should be trained in it and guidance should be sort of let the

Starting point is 00:26:10 clinical team respond nursing team um absolute necessary must risk to self risk to others because i totally agree with your point there yeah lovely um one bit that that made me quite interested both from a qualified perspective as well as a an unqualified perspective was when they were talking about the the fixed term roles and that ideally they ought to be for a minimum of 12 months and i think you know i've done i've done six month roles i've done nine month roles. So 12 months obviously would be great. But there also ought to be a minimum three months notice of renewals or not renewals. And that made me think, oh, gosh, sometimes I've been like a week away and got the nod that I'm being kept on. So something that makes

Starting point is 00:27:06 that a little bit firmer but also I think empowers people to be able to think oh mine is four months away I'll take this to supervision I'll take this to my management um to discuss this because wheels do turn very slowly in organizations but you know it now gives you that kind of clout behind you to say um or does it because would you feel comfortable with saying i am aware we're four months away from the end of my contract and the bps guidance does say that we ought to be aware three months in advance or or you know there is that power differential isn't there how would you feel about that if you were on a fixed term contract luke oh i've been on a fixed term contract like yourself and i totally agree with you it was it was very nice to see that very pleasant to see it

Starting point is 00:27:57 but also i chuckled a little bit like wow big big step because i've been on fixed terms i'm now luckily on a permanent which is really nice um but with with regards to the example you're giving approaching your manager whoever is in control of these things line manager hey contract's running out in so many months can we discuss xyz and i've had those conversations it's like yeah yeah yeah we'll get back to it things will be okay time creeps on you have the conversation again yeah things are going well and then i know i know similar people have had similar experiences to me and some of them have actually told me they've gone back to their supervisors who said yes we're going to extend

Starting point is 00:28:43 and then they were told no we're not going to extend and I said okay I've got I've got a month to find a job if that which as you know yourself and as everyone listening will probably know things move quite slowly with the job applications and getting through references and such so I think it I think it'd be really helpful to be able to take this to whoever's in charge and say, look, I know you're busy. I know things are up in the air. We have to have awareness. We have to have knowledge noticed three months before. So really, really good to see.

Starting point is 00:29:15 Yeah, because, you know, this is rent. This is mortgage. This is childcare. This is, you know, supermarket bills. This is being able to pay your car bills. Like this is these are people's lives, you know supermarket bills this is being able to pay your car bills like this is these are people's lives you know and I think once you get qualified and perhaps get a little bit further removed from the the kind of aspiring psychologist angle it's it's it's easier to forget that I think

Starting point is 00:29:42 yeah that makes total sense and that's what we're all after I suppose but that kind of goes hand in hand with having to put up with this in the first few years and certain things we we have to put up with that and are probably just like outdated habits which and behaviors which we could easily do away with so it's's good to see this. Yeah, it really is. And it really made me think about when I've done supervision for people, because I actually have always thought that I needed to kind of countersign everybody's notes, because they didn't yet have clinical responsibility. But this guidance really suggests that so long as the general standard of notes is being adhered to, that's no longer necessarily enforceable. Obviously, someone was concerned about the

Starting point is 00:30:31 standard of notes, they may still choose to do that. And you might get someone who is a bit of a control freak asking for that to happen. But actually, it might be useful to, you know, because of the pressures of services you know even to write my own clinical notes I've seen three clients today I haven't yet written them I've got to write them today so after we meet so in terms of the pressures of doing our own clinical notes let alone checking you know perhaps your entire caseload of notes before I finish for the week it does just make it that much trickier to do so this might be an interesting conversation in supervision that this is no longer necessarily

Starting point is 00:31:12 a requirement and how do we want to take that forward what do we want to do about that do we want to explore making changes to the way that we do things in our service currently yeah I was really surprised with that because like you, I was under the impression everything had to be countersigned by qualified. And if you were, for example, my supervisor, I assume that would free up a lot of time or you countersigning things would take a lot of time. But I get it, it's best practice.

Starting point is 00:31:41 It would be reflecting on you as the supervisor should something go wrong. But as you say, after a while, we could discuss this in supervision and if they are up to a certain standard and it's like 85, 90% of the time that standard's being hit, yeah, it gives them a bit more responsibility,

Starting point is 00:31:59 gives us a bit more responsibility and frees up that time that qualifiers from what i can see just don't seem to have you guys don't seem to have a lot of time to be spread out everywhere so notice we've got too many projects too many plates spinning um but too many demands upon our time generally you know and that is absolutely the case whether you are in private practice or and it will be NHS. And of course, the NHS can have its own additional pressures. I really liked the section about how supervision should be used, how supervision could be used.

Starting point is 00:32:36 I thought that was quite nice to have written down. Yeah, definitely. In my personal experience, I have struggled with supervision in times in over my various roles sometimes coming in with it being sort of a bit cloudy a bit ambiguous not really knowing what it's specifically used for and then other positions it's been very specifically defined and I felt like I couldn't bring certain things into that space because they didn't meet the predetermined definition of what supervision was for. So it's really good to see this and they went into quite detail actually, quite a bit of detail. It's really good to see that it can be sort of what you and your supervisor create and with time you are building up that relationship

Starting point is 00:33:24 where if there is something outside the norm you bring that in and it should be it should be able to exist there and you go forward and see how it's best going to help your practice which they kept referring to supervision is to develop yourself and the supervisor to help the people you're with which is really good absolutely yeah and i loved the idea of actually using that to link your theory and your practice but also explicitly mentioning that it should you should be it stopped short of saying compassionately tested didn't it how did it phrase it um let's let me look that up and i liked the idea that it said that supervision could be used to offer AP's intellectual challenge

Starting point is 00:34:06 enabling reflection which for me sounds like it's a compassionate challenge as well it's not like we're trying to catch you out we're trying to help you grow and develop from a respectful stance so supervision shouldn't feel like you're you're being found to be lacking like it should be you should hopefully be in your window of tolerance and well yes you should let's say that in supervision you should be within your window of tolerance let's let's go there well i'm certainly saying that um and that it shouldn't feel like you are being grilled you know that's not the intellectual challenge we're looking for like it's a it's yeah something to help transform you so that's even what they say transformational learning and psychological

Starting point is 00:34:56 support um not not just that it's you know what do you know tell us what you know yeah yeah i like the window of tolerance that's that's really helpful i i tend to use that a lot when i'm talking to service users i think it also mentioned i can't find it right now but it mentioned the zones of proximal development which is something i i tend to think of as well it's very constructive it's it's through the relationship um supervisor and the supervisee this is where you can get to with the right constructive feedback supervision is going to help you get there it might be uncomfortable at times but that's what i as a supervisor i'm here to help contain that and if you're struggling you come to me we'll figure it out together it's a it's a joint

Starting point is 00:35:45 relationship and it's it's it's building upon what i gather those are those those foundational elements of what make a psychologist because like yourself when you are qualified you're going to be plopped in a team or in a service or run your own thing and you're going to have to be able to support staff at the same time as service users patients so it's really good to have these challenges in a safe space which I suppose is the compassionate side of things. Absolutely it should be safe and as I was hearing you talk I was thinking oh Luke's going to be a really lovely supervisor when you're qualified like because it should almost feel like a nurturing not parental but that kind

Starting point is 00:36:27 of supportive relationship it should be a little bit like get behind me i've got you like if they want you they're coming through me first um you know so that you can't be asked to do everything by everybody and nor can you be you know criticized or got at like that should feel like there's someone on your team and and kind of on your side and and yeah that that is is all about looking out for you but the um the training strategies you mentioned i'm glad you mentioned that that was page 15 i'm glad you mentioned that so that's the the use of zone of proximal development theory within supervisor supported learning which um is beinart and cloacy 2017 and when i read that i was like yeah there's use of the zone of proximal development theory and so it's okay like even at my age and stage of my

Starting point is 00:37:23 career to be like yeah don't don't really know what that is but you've sort of gone into what that is as well so thank you for covering that for our audience Luke. I'm sure you remember it might it's I think it was Vygotsky if that rings a bell it's essentially you you work at the boundary, the edge of your ability. And if you are able to work at the boundary or the edge, then you will make, with the right guidance, you will make that leap. Whereas if there is too much of a leap, say your supervisor is very, very senior, for example,

Starting point is 00:37:57 and you're very, very new, that gap is too big. It's too much of a gulf. You can't access that next zone or the next ring that's how i viewed it anyway i see it's not being too overstretched it's it's what is realistic as a next step just outside of your comfort zone exactly yeah okay um just we had to take a little bit of a break in between um the first half of that reply and my second half because my little boy just got back from summer school and he came brandishing a certificate which I can't show you because it's got the name of the school on but he said I've got an award for for genuine integrity

Starting point is 00:38:37 and what was it you said? So genuine integrity is one of the school values and it means to do nice things for other people even when it's never working. Okay so don't know if you heard that but it's one of the school values is integrity but actually this award is for doing nice things for people or doing the right thing even when nobody's looking and I was like gosh isn't that isn't that what we do um in the psychology world and isn't that what we are asking for in our assistant psychologist roles as well and he's celebrating now he's kind of like he's scored a goal but that that matters doesn't it yeah that's that's brilliant first i'd say congratulations well done um it's clearly getting that from his mother uh potentially father as well i don't know but i

Starting point is 00:39:31 know he's getting it from you but yeah it's really poignant message and much of our work will be sort of behind the scenes i'm i'm in a tiny small office right now on the edge of a ward, just myself. And many assistants and qualifiers will know, you know, much of your work is spent in here preparing, looking at histories and trying to build cases. And then you go out and interact with the team or the patients. And it's good for that to be acknowledged just like your son there because it is a huge part of the role and and it's we get into it knowing that and we also want to do that we want to help others and with or without that recognition I suppose yeah and it you know

Starting point is 00:40:20 it goes beyond you know you mentioned the, but it goes beyond that as well. We've got to be making sure that we are speaking respectfully about our clients, even when they're not in the room. I think having been part of teams, it can be easy to slip into colloquialisms or less than respectful ways of talking about clients or clients' families. And it is a reminder, isn't it, that that integrity runs through all of our interactions when we are wearing our lanyard, you know. And for that matter, when we're not, you know, we've got the integrity to uphold the NHS values, even when we're going about our day-to-day lives, you know. And, you know, there's all the separate conversation,

Starting point is 00:41:09 but all the kind of what you should and shouldn't be seen doing when you're wearing a lanyard or even when you are on social media and you've tagged that you work for the NHS. And I think if I could go follow this up a little bit, you just said about using colloquialisms, it made me think of something in my experience. if I could go follow this up a little bit, you just said about using colloquialisms, it made me think of something in my experience. The role of psychology, whether it's assistants or psychologists, I have found is quite well respected in NHS fields, and it's getting more and more respect, which is great, because we need it. But with that respect, the whole Ben Parker,

Starting point is 00:41:46 great responsibilities, with great power comes responsibility and so forth. And with all that respect we are given, we should remember to do the things you've just mentioned, to uphold the values, to uphold the ethics that we do so believe in, that are all sort of embodied in everything we are doing to try and help others. And with that extra respect and responsibility we're given, we can kind of stand up and say actually to staff, nurses, whoever it may be, let's not talk about them like that. Let's keep it professional.

Starting point is 00:42:21 And in my experience, when that's happened, I haven't been kind of shunned away it's kind of like oh yeah they're right they're right because for better or for worse the the fact that psychology is so well known in the in popular sort of science popular world that does bring with it a bit of cachet and a bit of respect that we can use to our advantage at times and and it's also what makes it feel so in my experience it's what make it feel makes it feel so hard when we do feel exploited when we don't have the right support behind us because we think you know we are an important role for the patients and for the team so yeah I think it's a really good point and and really useful to to use your son as an example there.

Starting point is 00:43:06 Absolutely. You know, I feel like I'm doing a good enough job. You know, that's about as much as I have capacity for. I think that's all we need. It's all we need as parents. It needs to be good enough. It doesn't need to be exceptional. And maybe my good enough is exceptional for them. don't know like a whole other conversation anyway I'm just

Starting point is 00:43:30 conscious of time are there any other points that you want to kind of draw or bring forward before we close Luke I suppose just from the guidance, it mentioned reflective practice. And I would have liked to have seen a bit more about that because it is so huge in our discipline. So it's good that it's there, but they went in quite detail with regards to supervision, which I was really pleasantly surprised with. But they didn't leave much for reflection or reflexive practice and the difference between those two things so that would be a gripe of mine that maybe they could increase or improve in the future yeah it felt like it had been dropped in as a as a buzz phrase but there wasn't there wasn't

Starting point is 00:44:16 much legwork put into what that looks like and I think it would have been really nice um to have I've had some case study examples about what what is good practice and what isn't good practice and you know what what are your options if you find yourself in x y and z but maybe that is a maybe that is this is very much a recruitment document it's not necessarily hugely useful for someone that happens to find themselves in that role. True. Well, I still think that's a great, great idea, actually, because even for recruitment teams, it would be good to see what is a good, what is an intermediate or medium example and what is a bad example for recruitment and for the actual people trying to get their job

Starting point is 00:45:07 so I think that's a great great idea and you know maybe maybe someone's listening to this and and they'll take your idea forward I hope they do or maybe I'll just do it like that's also an option just before we finished I realized that we haven't covered what much of the guidance has been put together from. And it's from a relatively smallish research study done by the BPS where they sampled people who identify as a citizen psychologist who are British Psychological Society members. And the number of respondents for that was 337 so 337 but of that it gave us some insight into demographics and you kind of observed that actually initially you thought that some of the the demographics were changing and gave you a little bit of hope for the future but yeah like it's hard to it's hard to tell with it being a small sample, but also that it's limited to only BPS members, of course,

Starting point is 00:46:10 because it might be certain people that are more likely to be members. But, you know, of this, they also were sampling how often people were getting supervision. I think it was something like nine people were not getting any at all. Just like, oh, that is awful, isn isn't it that it brings it into stark reality yeah um i think it's really

Starting point is 00:46:31 good to see statistics behind it some some some good data but as you say it's very small in the grand scheme of things and um i think i'd noticed some of the socio-economics were shifting however then when i read the asterisks at the bottom, the reference, I suppose, it said that they had kind of created their own metrics. They'd taken the data and then they'd post data. They'd created three metrics to loosely be placed upon different metrics of the working class, middle class and maybe lower middle class or something. So even that in itself is a little bit loose so i don't know how much it is actually changing um so it would be good to see more robust statistics wider maybe reach out to people who have worked in the profession

Starting point is 00:47:16 um and we are qualified now as opposed to just aps um i'm not sure but it's good to get some stats but i don't know how far we can take it yeah um hearing you speak about asterisks my husband says that I I love small print like if I'm watching tv and there's an advert and it says like 67 percent of people preferred this or you know yada yada yada and then it says this mascara is amazing it's going to change your lashes and then I'm like there's asterisks and it says this advert is filled with lash inserts I'm like I'm outraged and he's not even noticed the asterisk so just he's kind of letting it flow over him I'm like no it's not fair it's not right no we have we have to find out where our numbers come from because statistics can be manipulated

Starting point is 00:48:02 and used and when you read that the asterisk at the bottom, you're like, oh, it's not actually that significant really, is it? So I can use the data, but it's not really saying what I think it's saying. Absolutely. The worst offender is when you're watching shampoo and conditioner adverts and it says versus unconditioned hair. And it's like, have i bought myself a really cheap conditioner from

Starting point is 00:48:28 you know the cheapest brand i could find i may have similar results to this because you know i'm not gonna not condition my long hair like so yeah it's you know we can skew the stats however we want can't we i guess this is the gift and the curse of viewing things analytically. Indeed it is. Luke it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you again and I was like let's keep this about half an hour but it's just it's such a big and important topic that we've not managed that at all have we but yeah I think these are really helpful and interesting conversations to have yeah thank you very thank you loads marianne it's been good to chat again um glad you're

Starting point is 00:49:14 recovering from your surgery recently you look great you look very well see you're very active on linkedin and to your point it is important we have these conversations because i think if i'd have stumbled across these things a few years ago, it would have been really, really helpful. So hopefully it helps some in the industry. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, so I've been quite vocal on my social media with the fact that I'd had a mole removed just last week, actually, and had to wear this big bandage for a week so I am had my stitches removed on Monday and we are we are talking currently on a Wednesday it's a Wednesday today isn't it so yeah it's been it's been a really interesting process actually and kind of I

Starting point is 00:49:57 decided to start talking about it from a from a health anxiety public health perspective because so many of us don't go to the doctors with changes that we've noticed in ourselves and obviously I hope that it will have a really good outcome for me but this might just change somebody else's outcome if they see me talking about it yeah absolutely and I think it will because I've been in similar positions where I've had sort of surgeries for health reasons and I've tried to cover certain things up and but I you know just thought it doesn't really matter that much I'm healthy I'm trying my best and and that is what you're trying to do which is which is really important thanks Luke thanks so much for your time and also before we finish you've been able to do this in

Starting point is 00:50:47 your work time because of another bit of guidance that suggests that we ought to be able to spend is it 3.75 hours per week whole time equivalent on continuing professional development which might include something like this or going to a research meeting or maybe even listening to aspiring psychologists podcast episodes I don't know like but you should have CPD in your role yes I am going to milk it a lot and say you know this is part of my 3.7 did you say 3.5 hours yeah I think it was 3.75 hours I think whole time equivalent I think the other hour or so I will be listening to the aspiring psychologist podcast well thank you very much I'd say other podcasts are available, but I don't really know that they are.

Starting point is 00:51:47 Thanks so much for your time, Luke. And please don't be a stranger and let me know if I can help with anything in the future. Thank you, Marion. Yes, I will do, definitely. Who knows, hopefully be back on one day. For the next stage of your journey, that would be marvellous. Thank you. Thanks, Luke. Thank you once again to our guest, Luke Meakin. What an absolute pleasure it is to speak with him. If you haven't yet caught our previous episodes, it's episode 148, wherever you get your podcasts. Or as I said, on YouTube, it is the one that was launched in October

Starting point is 00:52:22 called What is an Assistant Psychologist and What Do They Do? If you don't already subscribe to the channel, please do take a moment to do so. If you don't already follow the show on your podcast platform of choice, please do. It's the kindest thing you can do for free for any podcaster. Please do take a moment to rate and review if you are listening on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. You can rate as well. Come and let me know what you think to this episode on the free Facebook group The Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr Marianne Trent. Do consider whether the books The Aspiring Psychologist Collective and The Clinical Psychologist Collective might be really useful for your

Starting point is 00:53:03 journey and they do get beautiful reviews. If it's your time and you're ready for the next step and you love conversations like this and you love getting to know qualified psychologists that can help you with the next step of your journey, please do consider checking out the Aspiring Psychologist membership which you can join from just £30 a month with no minimum the next episode of this podcast will be available from 10 a.m on saturdays on youtube and from 6 a.m on mondays wherever you get your podcast thank you so much for being part of my take care then let this be your guide

Starting point is 00:53:45 with this podcast that you'll find you'll be on your way to being qualified it's the Aspiring Psychologist podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist

Starting point is 00:54:26 it just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Assistant Psychologist Roles: What the BPS Says You Should and Shouldn't Do

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