Rachel draws on her psychoanalytic and group relations understanding to explore her experience of 20 years of working inside the NHS in frontline services as a psychiatrist and clinical leader.
She asks whether we are missing something obvious that would help us understand the current crisis in the NHS. If so, why are we missing it?
Are powerful destructive unconscious primitive processes accepted in everyday life in the NHS? She shares various everyday compelling and challenging situations to illustrate how there is a conscious task which is at odds with the unconscious task that makes working in the NHS ‘Impossible’.
Recording of the talk
Dr Rachel Gibbons is a psychoanalyst, group analyst, consultant psychiatrist and organisational consultant. She consults widely to teams and individuals within the public and private health sector. She has successfully led many transformational and change processes in challenging environments.
Rachel was the National Director of Therapies for the Priory Group until 2020 where she provided strategic direction for the organisation and consultation to the therapy services in 100 hospitals across the UK. She is an experienced consultant psychiatrist and spent 20 years in the NHS in various leadership roles in different psychiatric settings that include: inpatient services, psychiatric intensive care wards (PICU), personality disorder teams, forensic, prison, hospital liaison, outpatient psychiatric, and psychotherapy services.
She worked and trained in organisational consultancy at the Tavistock Clinic. She credits her ability to thrive to three Tavistock Institute Leicester Conferences and many other group relations events. She writes, runs workshops and training on the nature of mental illness and self-destructive mental processes. She is a national expert on suicide and the effect that a death by suicide has on clinicians. She is currently the Chair of the Patient Safety Group and Working Group on the Effect of Suicide and Homicide on Psychiatrists at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.