Counselling Skills For Health Professionals

An introduction to basic theoretical and practical skills essential for all health care professionals. Early chapters explore theoretical issues relating to the nature of counseling and self-awareness. Later chapters consider specific skills and discuss ways in which counseling skills can be learned. Includes individual and group exercises. This third edition contains new material on aggression and personal safety.

This is the second edition of a book that I hope continues to be of practical value. For counselling must always be that: practical. No amount of talking, on its own, can really make a difference if people do not end up doing something as a result of counselling. The practical thread remains an important one throughout this edition. Counselling Skills for Health Professionals is not just a 'how to do it' book: people are probably too complicated for that approach to be of much use. Counselling is never simply a matter of learning a range of skills which you then apply in a range of settings. In the end, counselling is about facing the person in front of you, listening to them carefully and then supporting them as they work through their problems. For many problems, there are no easy answers and counselling doesn't offer any 'quick fixes'. It is essentially a supportive process. There are many things it cannot do. It cannot change certain social and political situations. It cannot cure diseases. On the other hand, what it can do is offer people more hope. Often, just the fact that there is somone who is prepared to hear your story and to listen to you is all that is needed. I remain convinced that the key issue in all types of counselling is the ability to listen.

This work discusses strategies for teaching, presentation, computing, listening, management and interview skills within each area.

This is a highly practical handbook aimed specifically at medical and health care professionals. The book begins with an overview of the main issues of counselling and communication looking also at the importance of self-care from both a personal and organizational perspective. Basic counselling and communication skills are followed by their application to specialised settings including sexual health, child health, infertility and rehabilitation.

Working Alliance Skills for Mental Health Professionals provides expert guidance to mental health providers who wish to develop and augment their skills and competence in this area of practice. Each chapter deconstructs a dimension of the working alliance in psychotherapy, defining and describing specific mechanisms and interventions that can help professionals establish an alliance with their clients. The book includes skills in nonverbal communication, ways to foster the working bond with diverse clients, goal and task setting strategies, and verbal and interpersonal therapeutic skills, as well as mechanisms for repairing ruptures and for fostering the working alliance through supervision. The authors provide "in session" examples of how each skill may be implemented, and highlight the use of interventions through clinical vignettes and masked clinical cases. Working Alliance Skills for Mental Health Professionals is ideal for use in training programs in counseling, clinical psychology, and social work. It may also be valuable to professional-level practitioners interested in honing their skills in optimizing the working alliance.

This book examines contemporary developments in nursing and health care in relation to the fundamental philosophy of counselling, the practicalities of counselling and relevant theoretical underpinnings. Community nurses often find themselves in situations which require in-depth listening and responding skills: for example, in helping people come to terms with chronic illness, disability and bereavement.