George Fisher, counsellor practitioner for NICU and paediatric oncology and haematology has shared her CUH Story to celebrate Psychological Professions Week.
What’s your role in our hospitals?
I’m a counsellor practitioner for NICU and paediatric oncology and haematology.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
My role is varied and keeps me extremely busy working across three specialities.
I mostly enjoy working with children, young people and their families and my work with young people and neurodiversity is a particular passion of mine.
I also enjoy the privilege of supporting our parents on NICU, to walk alongside them on their journey and provide a space for them to process their thoughts and feelings.
Tell us a bit about your CUH journey.
I started working at CUH in January 2023. Before this, I worked for Hertfordshire County Council as an autism specialist for 20 years and a senior school counsellor for three years. I also worked as a senior therapist for an arts based therapy service, working with children and young people who could not access mainstream therapies, and I still provide Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) clinical supervision for them.
This provided me with relevant experience to work with families who had additional and significant needs and when a colleague of mine mentioned working at the hospital and I came to visit, I thought that this would be a new opportunity for me to work in a different setting and support families.
It is now approaching almost a year of working here and I am enjoying being part of a passionate and dynamic team. I like engaging with the staff teams and being present to support families when needed.
Which services and patient groups do you work with?
My work for oncology and haematology involves working with children, young people and parents to provide therapeutic support and contribute to procedure preparations. This may involve liaising with the play specialists, nursing staff and consultants. At times, I may also liaise with external professionals such as school and social care. This can be in the form of inpatient and outpatient care.
My NICU role involves supporting parents to manage the challenges and emotional roller coaster of having a baby on the unit. This may incorporate helping them to process birth trauma, concerns about their baby’s health, bonding with their baby and worries about when baby will come home. We offer a flexible approach and support can be in the form of cot side check-ins, parent support group or formal counselling sessions. I also support outpatients to help with feelings around transition and post discharge follow up support.
What does a usual day look like?
The nature of the work means that there is no such thing as a typical day. However, a day on the NICU may involve:
- Attending the huddle meeting first thing
- Completing a ward round to ensure that new parents have our contact details and the opportunity to meet me
- Scheduled counselling sessions or cot side check-ins with parents
- Staff support sessions
- Attending a debrief (when needed)
- Liaising with other hospital team members to provide a joined up care
- Delivering outpatient bereavement support
A day on oncology and Haematology may involve:
- Attending clinics
- Providing emotional and psychological support to parent and children and young people on the ward
- Deliver outpatient counselling sessions
- Creating resources to support aspects of care
- Offering staff support
- Attend psychosocial meetings
How do you feel your role benefits our patients?
I feel my role benefits the patients because I am often able to provide consistency of contact and relationship.
This contributes to their support network and provides a safe space for them to talk about their thoughts and feelings and to process wherever they are in their journey.
The young people I work with benefit from having an external person to talk to about their illness and treatment and often they report that it is good to have someone outside of their family to talk to.
Parents on NICU often appreciate that there is someone looking out for their wellbeing needs and value having time to talk, process, problem solve and just be with. By accessing early support we are finding a reduction in outpatient referrals, which suggests that we are, helping to reduce the impact of their hospital experience, which I think is a great benefit.