 I'm at Staffordshire University today talking to mental health and paediatric nurses about mental health communication and eating disorders looking forward to a really good and busy day. You have the nursing conference. Yeah, we didn't have to be here actually, we do want to learn. The event came about off the back of students saying to us they wanted to know more about children's mental health issues. So we did at the conference last year and it went so well and we had such positive feedback and students found it really helpful to have that extra information about children's mental health that we decided to run it every year. So this is year two and then hopefully we'll keep it going. I see communication being the bedrock of nursing practice. Perhaps they've got a hobby that they really enjoy or there's a YouTube channel that they especially love or there's stuff that makes them laugh or cry or whatever their passions or skills or interests might be. If you invite them to invite you in to those things about them you'll learn a huge amount about them. You'll connect on a really human level. Is that part of the day when I'm hiding in the toilet? It happens at pretty much every event. Love toilets. I think my first talk went pretty well. It's always really hard to tell but everyone's chatting about it and had some good questions so that's good. So it's the coffee break at the moment so obviously if there's anyone, any brave souls who might be willing to talk a little bit about what they've heard so far this morning. Interprofessional working and learning between different courses. Most of my friends group are on adult nursing and quite often we get into quite heated debates about things because we all come from different backgrounds. We all have different things to bring to the table. Like trying to understand what their concerns and what their worries are and make them to know that this is the reason why we are here to support them. Basement, it can be quite certain. Touch and go with some patients. You might not have a lot of exposure to us so to have an extra confidence like that I think is brilliant and just provides more information for us. OK, we're heading back in now for the next talk. I'm sure it will be great. One of the things I was noticing in practice was that especially with younger children and I feel like I've got expertise in working with younger children. They were in a clinic room but they weren't necessarily being heard. Are they able to make decisions? Is there anything that suggests that they're not able to make decisions and if not, what should we be doing in order to involve them in it? What one thing do you think might make a big difference that everyone could do? Hopefully facilitating that we're hearing all voices in a clinic room and we're not just a line to one or another and how we're documenting that in our clinical notes really just to make sure that it meets in the middle. The other thing about eating disorders is they can feel really lonely. So a key thing to kind of get our heads around right from the start is the nature of eating disorders and how they're different from other physical and mental illnesses. And a key thing here is that an eating disorder often your patient doesn't necessarily right now want to get better. Neurodiversity is about celebrating people's ability so it's not negating and it's not dismissing people's difficulties but it's about celebrating what they do well and celebrating what they're good at as well. If young people feel highly unsafe we need to think about how predictable we need to make the relationship with them. We need to give them what predictability we can. We need to give choice and control where we can. What he noticed was that people with depression often had a negative view of themselves. I'm a failure. I'm rubbish. I'm worthless. A negative view of the world and other people. It's a terrible place. Nobody wants to help you. And importantly a negative view of the future. So it's terrible now and it always will be terrible. So if you think about it if that's the kind of internal thinking that you've got it's not surprising you're depressed is it? Imagine that if you had those thoughts I'm awful the world's awful and it's always going to be awful. The language that we use is really important. She's picked up whatever they've said to her whether they said it's all in your mind or whatever. She's picked up that message that it's all in the mind she's making up. She's exaggerating which has really affected her and made her not want to actually say to her about how she is feeling. And a special mention to Pukie who has travelled 200 miles to be here with us today. It's been absolutely brilliant to have you here and we hope that you will come back and do this again in a couple of years' time. And hopefully you've all done me a little post-it note that you're going to stick on the tree outside? Yes. It's the end of the day. So let's maybe think about it. So are you happy with that one? Yeah, really happy. Really happy. And what do you think will be the key messages that students will take away? I think they're listening and they're not feeling afraid to broach difficult topics. And just that sense of being weird, I think that's it. Because people get so caught up in doing, doing, doing and actually just being with that message I think is really important. Yeah, on the tree out there somebody's put silence is golden and I'm always one for filling in silences rather than taking a step back and just being really. So I think that's a key message that I'll take away that actually it's okay to sit in silence. I think it's essential also just to be human and take the skills you already have and be at peace, give people time, listen, don't rush. It's okay. It's not a race. You know, spend time and with that somebody will feel valued, listened, validated, important. And that's what I think some of the things that we need to really hone on. It's not always about skill acquisition. It's about being comfortable in your own skill skin so that you can enable somebody else to feel the same way about themselves. To conclude, it's been a really successful day and thank you to you, Pricu, for coordinating everything and showing experiences and expertise and so on. It's really enriched the day I think. Definitely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. That's a wrap I guess. Thank you. And just like that it was all over. 200 miles to drive home while I mull over what's been a really successful day. Thank you so much to Staffordshire University for inviting me to be part of this. And great to have so much input from the nursing students. I really hope it's been a useful day to you. See you again. I hope. Bye.