CMHL is pleased to report on the successful completion of 2022's prequalification program support delivery.
The Department of Health (DH) funded the Pre-Qualification Employment program in 2022, allowing area mental health services to employ Nursing, Allied Health, and medical undergraduates to work part-time in mental health settings while completing their studies
DH partnered with the Centre for Mental Health Nursing (CentreMHN) and Centre for Mental Health Learning (CMHL) to support the program's project coordinators and deliver reflective practice sessions.
Monthly meetings were held and an online sharing space was established (via Basecamp) for all project coordinators within the participating services. These spaces facilitated:
- service updates
- sharing of recruitment challenges and opportunities
- Re-established the Basecamp platform, an online space, accessible to all services and used to facilitate the sharing of documents
- Sought feedback and proposed discussions to aid in the planning of reflective sessions
- Opportunity for project co-ordinators to pose questions to other services and DH to collectively problem solve
- DH updates
- CentreMHN updates
- CMHL updates including reviewing plans for reflection practice sessions
CentreMHN and CMHL also collaborated with the project coordinators to design and deliver discipline-specific reflective practice sessions, available to all pre-qualification program student participants.
The feedback from students regarding the reflective sessions was overwhelmingly positive, including:
- “It was great to hear what everyone is doing in their roles and different locations”
- “This was very engaging; it has also empowered my knowledge regarding mental health care”
- “I thought it was really valuable for my learning to speak to both members of the MDT as well as other pre-qual OTs”
- “Thank you for such an amazing couple of sessions, they have really helped foster my passion for mental health through being able to connect with experts and other like-minded people”
CMHL has met with DH and is currently planning the program for 2023. At this stage, the program is expected to operate in a similar format and timing as last year, commencing in July 2023. Further information as planning progresses will be shared with services.
