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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

St Andrew’s Healthcare seeks nurses to work in child and adolescent mental health services

This Mental Health Awareness Week (10-16 May), St Andrew’s Healthcare, charity providing specialist care in mental health and learning disability, is highlighting exciting job opportunities for nurses to join its Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Northampton.

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are designed for boys and girls aged 13 to 18 with complex mental disorders, severe emotional and behavioural difficulties, intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and autistic spectrum disorders.

St Andrew’s Healthcare is seeking student and newly qualified nurses and senior nurses to work in this rewarding field. Nurses who join its world-class mental health facility will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team of experts in mental health and child and adolescent mental healthcare. They will enjoy extensive training, career development opportunities and financial support to help them relocate to Northampton.

St Andrew’s Healthcare offers a supportive preceptorship programme for students and newly qualified nurses. This enables them to work in different divisions including CAMHS, Learning Disabilities (LD), Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), Men’s, Women’s, Dementia & Huntington’s disease, and Brain Injury to broaden their skills and experience before choosing their specialism. That might be in outpatient, inpatient or rehabilitative care, or in supporting services such as nutrition, social work or behavioural health, patient education and engagement.

The charity is also seeking a highly motivated and compassionate Registered Nurse, ideally with experience in acute mental health care, to join the CAMHS team as a Deputy Ward Manager/Clinical nurse leader. The successful candidate can enjoy excellent learning and development programmes, and specialised training in a range of therapeutic interventions.

Working in the CAMHS service can be challenging but it is also fun and highly rewarding, according to senior staff nurse Shelby Pilgrem. Shelly joined St Andrew's Healthcare when she was studying for her nursing degree at University. She started as a cleaner and soon transitioned to a Bank Healthcare Assistant and did most of her shifts in CAMHS, and eventually qualified as a Nurse and specialised in this area.

Shelby says, “The thing I enjoy most about working at St Andrew's is supporting patients and making a difference. It is very rewarding to see a patient get better and be discharged from the ward. The patients can be very appreciative. I have had many letters from patients explaining how I have helped them.”

Shelby says that to work in CAMHS nurses need to aware of how trauma can affect the development of a child. Fortunately, St Andrew’s Healthcare provides excellent training in this area.

Shelby says, “Trauma informed care is one of the best training sessions I have been on. Not only does the training explain how trauma can affect the young people it enables us to distinguish between the normal behaviours of teenagers and identify behaviours related to mental health. As a nurse working in this area, you need to have positive and appropriate behaviour and be aware of your own emotions and manage them, even in times of stress.”

To succeed as a CAMHS nurse, Shelby recommends that having fun and laughing with the young people really helps.

She adds, “Like most young people, boredom can be an issue so if you have the confidence and imagination to be a bit silly and entertain them, that’s half the battle. I find working in CAMHS is exciting and fun. I am a child at heart, and I love to play games and I love Disney, so I feel as though I have topics of conversations that I can talk to the young people about and I have that common interest with them.”

For other vacancies at St Andrew’s Healthcare visit http://bestofbothworlds.uk.net/st-andrews-healthcare/.

St Andrew’s Healthcare is part of the ‘Best of Both Worlds’ recruitment campaign. The campaign brings together the University of Northampton, Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Northampton General Hospital, Kettering General Hospital (KGH), St Andrew’s Healthcare and Northants GP and aims to recruit nurses, doctors, and healthcare professionals to live and work in Northamptonshire.

To find out about vacancies across Northamptonshire visit http://bestofbothworlds.uk.net/