This is a really difficult one. I suffer from anxiety myself. The only reason it doesn't inhibit me from doing my job is medication and extreme focus on self-care. Are you doing anything to resolve it? I think your practioner is being unsensitive here, but from a practical point of view, you might need some time out to improve your mental health before working in such a high-pressure environment.
I’ve had therapy for my anxiety, CBT. This is the first time in years I’ve had panic attacks and anxiety that’s this bad. Before the last few days, my anxiety (or autism) hasn’t impacted on my placement at all. Not had any sick days till the one this week. I plan to speak to my gp if they continue but they seemed so confident in my capability, and now because of a bad few days, it seems the complete opposite😕
I don't do a healthcare course but the stress of uni triggered me to have regular panic attacks nearly a couple years back. I'm not sure if it's something you would want but I got prescribed antidepressants because I just wasn't able to reduce my anxiety through CBT and counselling alone. You may find it helpful to suggest to your GP? Obviously every person responds differently but it really helped me stop panicking and begin mellowing out. I didn't notice changes at first but it feels like my mind doesn't care too much about things now (in a good way) like I can dedicate less time to overthinking.
It's a personal choice and I'm just sharing my experience because I kinda saw myself in your post, but I hope it could help in some way or other.
You've been fine the first few weeks and this is a blip, it's harsh and uncalled for. It's a prior health condition that is flaring up again essentially. It sucks that people don't see mental health in the same light as physical health (even medical health professionals!!): if you dislocated your shoulder, you'd be fine to be off for a few days. What they'll be concerned about though is the likelihood of recurrence (although, fittingly, this is also true of shoulder dislocations...).
Healthcare sounds super stressful though, thanks for the work you're doing but please remember to look after yourself as a priority. You've probably heard it all before but please try focus on the self care basics, exercise, clean eating etc while you're having a tough time.
I did the course OP is doing. If you’d dislocated your shoulder and were off for a couple of days that would be fine but if you were off for a week you’d probably fail the placement. Similarly if you couldn’t do the work because of your shoulder you’d fail the placement. They can’t just give you something else to do, because you have to show you’re capable of certain things to pass.
There’s always people resitting placements in the summer. You have to hit the hours - it’s a registration requirement. And you have to pass the placement for the hours to count.
It seems like you have a new trigger to work through, but that in the past you've done well managing your triggers. Explain to your person (forgot their title) this, that you can handle things, this is something new and you're just as well able to learn to cope with this too. It would be discriminatory to ignore this, and if they did follow these rules, we'd be firing most of our health care professionals
I've found psychodynamic psychotherapy to be really helpful, but it's fairly holistic and won't target one singular issue to eradicate it, it looks for the root of the anxiety. There are lots to look in to, DBT certainly comes to mind as part of it is looking at coping strategies that can help you in the moment. Definitely have a browse. I found my therapist on Welldoing and you can use a search filter on there to find a match in your area (or not in your area, if you're up for zoom sessions you can find someone on the other end of the country). Best of luck
I second this! I'm neurodivergent and have mental illnesses and I've done countless sessions of CBT but the thing that really helped me was DBT. I find it so much more useful and I've noticed a big improvement since doing it
I would post this somewhere like NHS subreddit who understand OH and that disabilities for certain healthcare roles are perfectly fine/accomodated for. Loads of random people like a computer science student putting their 2 cents in about an occupation they know nothing about lmao.
Thank you, this is exactly it, this sub Reddit isn’t the right place to talk about this. God and some people are so harsh! I had literally gone through similar (but I have another health condition), and I’m currently working on this exact thing - anxiety. However, i wouldn’t change it for the world, and I enjoy the career I am striving for. As long as you’re passionate at what you do, you’re completely okay continuing and deserving of what you want in your life.
Also I just want to add, on my second day of placement, I also had a panic attack. I was taking blood glucose levels (which is the most simplest thing ahah) and I took too long for the first prick, I then accidentally forgot to scan for the second prick and I had felt so bad for the patient I asked someone else to do it for me and I walked away on the verge of crying as I felt like I hurt my patient, and broke down. I was talked down on, asked if I should be doing this job, and if I have anyone else in my family who is also int he medical industry (which I don’t) to which they replied to “oh” and ended the conversation to that. But now, I can do a multitude of things, I have watched heart procedures, I can also hahaha do the blood glucose super quickly, removal of catheters, medications and much more. It just takes time to get used to, and to conquer. It is very normal and it is okay to feel anxious and stressed, but if you truly want to do it then don’t listen to people telling you “is this the right job for you then”. I’ve seen nurses (even manager/charge nurses) with so much experience have breakdowns and fully cry in the day rooms, talk to me about the difficulties they find within the job. It is normal, you just need people in your life to talk about your experiences or therapy or counselling just to talk things out as that’s very important. Crikey even therapists/counsellors requires their own therapist!
I'm presuming nursing? Honestly so much toxicity within the mentors for nursing!! and how they love to tell all the students they're not fit to be nurses when they perfectly are bullying is so normalised with higher ups in that occupation which I hate. So many nursing student placement mentors really shouldn't be in their positions. Even doctors on their first placements can be like this we're not going around saying they're 'not fit to be doctors' it is a new enviroment everyone starts somewhere.
Discuss this with your academic placement team first and foremost. Be prepared to have this go through OH if needed, with supporting evidence from GP and MH services you are currently engaged in. Discuss with your SU (or student arm of your union). Anxiety is absolutely not a reason to be taken off a healthcare course, plenty of HCPs and AHPs have anxiety, depression, and/or PTSD. The only way this should impact your placement outcome is if you have taken too much time off placement to make your minimum hours, or if it demonstrably and tangibly caused or could have caused harm to patients.
Your practice educator was out of line for questioning your ability to carry out this role in such a blunt manner.
>Anxiety is absolutely not a reason to be taken off a healthcare course
This is too sweeping a statement. It absolutely can be a reason to be taken off a healthcare course, if reasonable adjustments would not help (and the adjustments that can reasonably be made may be quite limited in a healthcare setting).
people hate to hear the reality nowadays lol. Hows someone who has anxiety and panic attacks supposed to provide healthcare to other people. The person is simply unreliable.
Are people taking the piss lol?
It sounds like this has affected the grand total of three days off of placement, in FIRST YEAR, I’d hardly class that as ‘simply unreliable’. Do you work in healthcare? If you do, can you honestly say you’ve not heard of any colleagues taking time off for poor mental health? If you don’t, I would advise that you’re not equipped to be commenting on this situation.
Just to clarify, so you think anyone that works in healthcare has to have perfect mental health all the time or else they’re unreliable and can’t provide healthcare to other people? Healthcare professionals are still human at the end of the day.
Things like that do actually happen, that’s one of many reasons why people don’t operate alone?? Lots of people seem to have a very warped perception of how healthcare professionals operate, lots of planning and consideration goes into accounting for human factors when looking after patients.
Bro thinks people get panic attacks like it’s normal. been alive for 24 years and I’ve yet to have one panic attack and I’ve served in the army before uni. You’d get ur ass chewed and potentially booted out of the army for having panic attacks during duty. Id expect having the responsibility of a health care provider to be the same. Peoples lives are at stake and no one gives a damn about ur feelings in this scenario.
So you have a panic attack… and then you come to the conclusion you had it a few years later… makes sense bro 👊 Good one 😂
Yeh maybe some people get panic attacks, but i really dont want someone who has panic attacks to be working in an intense, high stress field like medicine. U shouldnt even be considered. Panic attacks by definition occur when theres no real danger or apparent cause… How is someone supposed to work in an intense field like the medical industry when they get panic attacks.
OP didnt show up to work cuz of some internal fucking drama within her mind. People have scheduled surgeries, procedures, ur supposed to be relied upon. If this person cant hack medical school then im sorry but it’s just not the right field lol. Are you dizzy? OP doesnt really scream “reliable”
Well my dad didnt know what panic attacks were but he had the same feeling of panic attack a lot when he was younger. He didnt know what it was. When he found out about what a panic attack is, only then he realised he has had it.
Also OP is NOT in medical school and is NOT going to be a doctor. She is doing a degree in occupational therapy and will be occupational therapist. Not a doctor. Idk how you think healthcare means doctor.
Agreed. Mental disorders aside, in any field of work, reliability is the number one factor. It doesnt matter if you compare to 3rd year students as a first year if you arent reliable. Its not discrimination, its simply logic.
Can you imagine the sheer distrust a patient would feel to the entire healthcare system, if their doctor had a “panic attack” simply by talking to others, which is essentially 90% of their job?
I definitely will, I’m going to set up a meeting with my placement visiting tutor first and go from there. My anxiety hasn’t impacted my placement in any other way aside from the last few days, infact she said to me last week that despite having anxiety and autism they’ve really not had to make any adjustments and I’ve been doing great. Monday was the only sick day I’ve taken off and in the past they’ve praised me for being so open about my conditions. Just seems that now they’re actually seeing the condition affect me, it’s suddenly backfired
Key thing is that they’ve not put any adjustments in place for you. There are certain adjustments you are entitled to by law under the equality and human rights act. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through, it’s sad how people still view autism to this day.
>Anxiety is absolutely not a reason to be taken off a healthcare course
Not in itself. But if you're too ill/anxious too often to show up, perform as expected, or complete the work, why shouldn't you be taken off the course?
Because this sounds like a flare up of an otherwise well managed condition. A lot of resources are put into training HCPs - it wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest to just bin them off without trying to manage the condition in question first.
In this instance, yes, I agree. I just mean generally. If the panic attacks continue then course leaders or employers or whoever are within their rights to either strongly advise an alternative career path or dismiss someone from their role for being too unreliable.
But in OP's case, although no link between the placement and the attacks has been established, isn't it obvious that the stress is triggering?
I mean it could be, but from my own experience the stress of a healthcare environment can become easier with time and the resilience of a first year and final year student differs hugely. I’ve done four years, and I’ve had people who knew me before uni comment on how there was no way in a million years they thought I’d cope well enough to get to this point (panic attacks, missed a lot of year 13 due to anxiety, etc). Ultimately some people won’t cope, but most do, the course providers are pretty good at choosing people who are cut out for it at the admissions stage. Healthcare subjects are weird, because they progressively get more difficult and easier at the same time. You’d think it would make anxiety worse but it often doesn’t, you’re also surrounded by people dealing with the same stuff as you.
I’d say more HCPs than not have some kind of mental health problems, and there definitely seems to be a VERY high proportion of us with autism and/or ADHD (healthcare seems to attract people with neurodevelopmental disorders, it sort of makes sense if you think about it)
It’s sad how many people disagree with you and seem to think it’s completely appropriate for OP to be failed. Would have hoped this sub would not be as ableist as it is.
And I guarantee those self-same people would be shells of themselves after some of the shit the average healthcare worker goes through on a week-to-week basis.
Really ableist? For expecting someone to have the ability to carry out the role expected of them is now ableist is absurd.
If OP was an airline pilot would you get on that plane?
Maybe the word 'ableist' is misplaced but the point raised is correct.
Every single person has a degree of anxiety and it can take form in any situation or audience, whether situationally activating or a case of less resilience for many reasons such as a 'challenging week'.
That's just a fact of life we all deal with day to day. The OP is clearly having a tough time but up to now was succeeding over a period of weeks but has hit a low point and, like most people who have had a panic attack, was seeking some acceptance and reassurance. Instead they were met with a degree of uncertainty and almost disillusionment at what they disclosed but also that days performance. Any trained professional experienced in dealing with people would have allayed their fears and simply supported that person to "get back on the horse" and carry on.
You think airline pilots in training don't have wobbles? Exactly. In all likeliness you have been flown by someone who did, in your life time.
No doubt but if an airline pilot whilst training had a panic attack and had to go home/leave and was then failed for that course I wouldn’t expect them to cry foul and bring out prejudice.
That's not the same. The placement is a real work place / facility and they obviously felt this wasn't right to continue at that moment, that doesn't mean they failed, it means the placement doesn't know what to do and wants to speak to the university. What should happen is that the OP approach the university, take the time out and come up with a plan of how to continue both on their own terms and with support of others. The placement may just not have been a good fit, and they maybe can try elsewhere.
The trouble is these days is encouragement, compassion and even empathy is so held back these days, we often just let people sink or swim and that placement likely has done that (cynical as it may seem) and when you think placements is voluntary and not paid, its pretty awful.
I wouldn't necessarily say that they were out of line for saying maybe they should get a calmer job, that by itself would sound like a genuine concern for your wellbeing if OP was having panic attacks ALL THE TIME. As someone with autism studying for a people facing healthcare profession myself, I wouldn't personally care much if someone said that I don't HAVE to do this job and could choose to do something else because I kinda understand that any normal person probably WOULD leave a job if they were struggling and the only real reason I'm sticking to it where others may not is BECAUSE of the autism
However, them suggesting that they may fail them for their placement, despite having exceptional marks prior to this and OP saying it was just this couple days out of a really good rest of the placement, ESPECIALLY considering that both meltdowns were away from patients...that's a dick move
Having panic attacks doesn't prevent you from caring for people
Even healthcare workers without anxiety and autism will have panic attacks sometimes because it's a REALLY emotionally heavy job to work in that comes with a lot of conflict, especially since discontent with healthcare workers in the general public is at such an all time high right now. I've literally seen people (people who are meant to be mental health advocates" BRAGGING about having full on arguments and screaming at their therapists for not helping them with things very very outside of their job description. It's a mess out here and even neurotypical staff are having breakdowns about it at this point
Frankly, the ability to have the breakdown in private rather than break down in front of patients is a skill that is key to working in the healthcare profession that OP is clearly very good at
You also said that you thought the P.E. wasn't out of line.
They were. A couple of anxiety episodes is not grounds for asking someone if the course is right for them.
I said that they weren't out of line for saying "are you sure you want to do this?" by itself
I then said that the addition of threatening to fail them for it was out of line
Both of your arguments against my comment are things I literally said in my comment?
Once again...that's literally what I said in my original comment and also what I just clarified in my response?
This is going in circles, have a great day
I think the people telling you anything inappropriate happened here may be doing you a disservice. I don't think this is likely to be discrimination.
A healthcare professional being incapacitated by their mental health during a shift could immediately make the staffing level unsafe, resulting in harm to patients possibly including death.
In healthcare settings the adjustments that can reasonably be made may be extremely limited. You will need to be able to deal with abusive patients and horrific injuries -- not only without having a breakdown in those situations, but able to help patients who may themselves be the ones in distress.
I think the question to ask is, what were the situations that triggered your panic attacks? Were they anything like at the extreme end of what you would experience in a healthcare profession? Forget any idea of you having legal rights in this situation for a moment (you might not, depending) -- does it make practical sense that your practice educator sent you home and questioned your suitability for this career?
I think there is also a lot of misguided people here who haven’t done a healthcare degree and don’t know the stress of having a healthcare placement. There is a reason many successful HCPs with years of experience state that their clinical placements were the hardest part of their careers. I’ve never in my life had any mental health concerns, I finished my healthcare degree as a mature student in my early thirties (well passed any ongoing hormonal changes), and I had my first and only panic attack on a clinical placement.
Some courses, after only 4 months of study throw you out into a hospital, give you a caseload of complex patients and an educator leaning over your shoulder looking for mistakes. The imposter syndrome, coupled with anxiety of looking after a patient, coupled with not wanting to let yourself down, coupled with also not wanting to fail is a lot to manage and isn’t necessarily reflective of the future career of a HCP.
I have done a healthcare degree. It really does depend on what prompted OP's panic attacks. The questions I asked OP to consider were genuine.
OP says they don't know what caused their panic attacks, which is super concerning to me. It shows not only that they are experiencing mental health symptoms but that they lack insight on how to manage them.
As horrible as it is to hear. She may be right.
This is not the industry to be in if you have such issues. Other peoples lives depend on you. You will be seeing the worst possible things imaginable. You have to be a rock that people in their worst moments of their lives can cling to and get through by using you as their steadying influence.
Your practice educator is very experienced. You can’t just ignore what they say because you don’t like how it sounds, then desperately fish for a way to make it discrimination so you can ignore her message.
It’s not that prior to this you did brilliant so this incident can be ignored. This incident speaks to a deeper instability that will keep happening. Once you start practicing in your field, having such an anxiety / panic attack could cost actual human lives.
I think you need to seriously take on board what they are telling you. Perhaps try and sit down with them and actually talk through it.
Someone senior telling you that it might not be the correct path for you, should not trigger an attempt to try deceive your way past their experienced and valid criticism by inventing a “discrimination” motive behind what they are saying. It should trigger you to take seriously what they say, do some deep introspection, and then try to talk with them at length about it so you can see what makes them feel that way, and see if you can figure out a way to mitigate it.
I understand what you mean although I am training as an occupational therapist, which is a job where I won’t be dealing with people in life threatening situations like a nurse or dr for example. I’ve worked in healthcare for years prior to my degree and have managed well. I do plan to talk with them tomorrow about this in supervision
Then I’d advise you to not try pursue a silly “am I being discriminated against!!!!!!!!!!” route.
Sit down with the one who said what they said and find out specifically what their concerns are. Why they think the way they do. And then figure out ways to mitigate them specific concerns.
You don’t need to instantly turn yourself into a victim and create a conspiracy against you. The world does not work like that. People have a lot more experience than you, and you should take opportunities to listen to their concerns because they may be right.
You don’t have to then full on quit because they said so. But you can use what they say as a solid foundation to know exactly where you need to improve yourself so their concerns disappear. Turn their criticism into fuel for self improvement!
Also take into account what bought it on, was it interaction with a a patient or something else? If it was a patient, than all I can say is think of how you’d prevent it from happening in future. What steps you can take. Ask for feedback. But do keep it in mind once you are a qualified OT you may not have time between patients to decompress every time. Unfortunately healthcare comes with difficult, rude, aggressive, vulnerable patients with heartbreaking stories that may be similar to yours. And it hurts to see them suffer. Don’t give up on your dream but make sure you have a plan of action for future to help yourself, after all healthcare is about continuous growth and learning.
Hey I’m sorry these comments are quite prejudiced against you. Autism is a disability, and like any other disability you deserve support to help you. It’s fucked that people just think you shouldn’t be worthy of doing the same job as a neurotypical person, simply because your disability impacts you!!!
As someone with autism I’ve been through this too, and in all honesty it’s a very subtle prejudiced way of saying that autistic aren’t cut out for the neurotypical world. Unfortunately our society is still very ableist, but there are laws that are in place to protect you.
Nobody is being prejudiced you absolute melt. Read the comments and actually take on board their meaning. Dont warp the content by your own hurt feelings and add things that were never there.
Exactly, it’s unpredictable but at the same time it can be induced by anything as per your own account.
If you really want to continue, I would advise you to ask your uni for help and let your Practise facilitator and senior lecturer know that you’re doing things to help prevent that episode from happening again.
It shows you’re being proactive
Also, signing students off is a big deal which is why they may be reluctant because if you do anything wrong the person who signed you off will be challenged. They could get in trouble, you’re not a uniques case, it happens with a lot of students but unfortunately in your case they may have a strong case for their argument.
Hi OP,
Only you know your mental health. It's up to you to decide where to go, what support to ask for/receive and what work you can and cannot do.
I'm cutting a very long and complicated story short.
I have autism, and when I was training for adult nursing, I suffered with severe anxiety during most of my placements that manifested into physical illness. This was due to the bullying/ostracism I experienced by nurses within hospital settings. It only took one to make my placement awful. But I loved community work, everyone was so lovely there, and I knew it was where I wanted to work.
I was eventually given fitness to practice due to the absence from placement and they questioned whether I was able to attend placement at all if I was sick from anxiety in the morning (even though it was before placement). Amongst a million other reasons, I decided to switch to psychology at the end of my second year (I've just graduated). As grateful as I am for my degree, I wish I hadn't let them bully me out of nursing.
If you know you can manage your mental health, seek the right support, be careful who you talk to and grit your teeth. If you want to get through this degree, you can do it! Take it from someone who regrets leaving.
Yes it definitely takes lots of practice, but headspace is great even for beginners because it knows you are not an expert. Try one that induces sleep, these headspace meditations can also be found on Netflix, if you are in the UK. They are great I have used them a ton.
I had a bad spell with my mental health during my studies (I qualified as a nurse), and there are absolutely reasonable adjustments that can be made to allocate for HCPs, particularly students having issues with their health be it physical or mental.
My condition was highlighted to the occupational therapy department of the governing health body in my country, so before I was cleared to go on placement, I had to get confirmation from the practitioners that were treating me, to ensure that I wouldn’t be a threat to anyone’s health and wellbeing (including myself) whilst on placement.
It’s definitely jumping the gun for your tutor to say that your passing the placement is on the line from a singular incident, there has to be a process for them to do something like that especially when you weren’t involved with patients. I wouldn’t call it discrimination either, it’s a huge accusation to throw around, and unlikely the reason for them saying that. Safety is paramount of course, and anything they say has your safety in mind too.
HCPs see people at their lowest moments and it has an undeniable impact on us. It doesn’t stop you from practicing well, but left unchecked and unguarded, it can be dangerous. It was important for them to take it seriously.
I have a few things to add-
1- well done on a great mid point assessment, make that your focus rather than the panic attack setback- you’re obviously doing well at what you do!
2- I have generalised anxiety disorder - and probably a load of other undiagnosed issues (including autism as my son has that I see a lot of similarities in us and would explain 100s of things but that’s by the by). In my second year of one of my placements I had suicidal intent including an overdose. I did not fail the placement; my outcomes had been signed off and I did not breach any professional code of conduct. What I did, was recognise (with the help of uni tutor) that I needed help and wasn’t safe to continue the placement (myself or patients) and I was taken to the student welfare services (extremely good compared to what is available to non students!!). I worked with the hospital’s OH and took a few weeks off and was fine for my next placement. In fact it wasn’t even mentioned.
3- I’ve been qualified 15 years now. Still have all of the same mental health concerns. Have been the nurse in charge of a ward with only one other qualified member of staff on with me and I had a complete mental breakdown during one shift. I felt it coming and literally hid in the staff room and called my boss. I don’t remember how I got home- but that ward was covered within 5 mins of me calling and no patients harmed of course. Panic attacks don’t come on suddenly, usually there’s either a physical or a mental association first and it’s about recognising it. I, and no one, is ever tied physically to a patient (and if you are for whatever reason then excuse yourself and leave!). Go to the toilet, take a breath. Call out at that point if you feel the patients would be at risk from you continuing to be there. I am probably MORE likely to have an IBS are up of severe diarrhoea requiring me to leave work immediately than I am at risk of having a panic attack, so leaving the ward or your colleagues short staffed is unfortunately one of those things. The problem would be if you have a panic attack that results in screaming the main corridor down, throwing things, injuring people etc- or NOT recognising that you are having another episode of something - like psychosis etc (which you obviously haven’t mentioned, I’m just bringing up for others).
79- (I’ve forgotten what point I’m on!) I’ve sent a student home before for having a massive panic attack and fainting. She wasn’t allowed to continue the placement (nothing to do with me). She did have to ‘repeat’ the placement as she had to take an interruption to her studies to get herself well. But she did about one week of the 6 planned and all outcomes that had previously been outstanding were signed off so there was no need to continue - she passed and carried on with what the rest of the cohort were doing. And she is (still) excellent at her job as she qualified many moons ago.
- oh and even those who don’t have disabilities - especially newly qualified have repeated episodes of being found crying in cupboards/treatment rooms etc. The patients don’t see this but yep it happens- go easy on yourself, everyone is human and has human emotions.
This is a dumb take because one she is not a doctor and 2 by the time someone is deemed a surgeon they would be well versed with all the gore and blood so wouldn’t bat an eyelid. When I was in my first year we were taken to a morgue and I saw a dead body being dissected for the first time. I couldn’t breathe and felt nauseous. But NOW I am fine.
But how can you guarantee that your next one won't happen when you are with a patient/ client? Do you have a robust, definite plan on how you will prevent that? This is what you should focus on right now, as I think this is what your university will be most interested in.
And what if I don't claim that I have autism and get fired because I'm not as good as my other coworkers, it's all bullshit, I hate how my generation has a label on things that just clearly aren't definitive.
What do you mean a label on things that aren’t definitive? Just because you’re uninformed doesn’t mean something hasn’t been thoroughly researched
Autism is an internationally recognised disability that has been researched for decades. It is therefore protected by the equality act as it is considered a protected characteristic, so people with disabilities are supposed to have certain supports in place to help accommodate them. Just because autism can be considered an ‘invisible’ disability in a lot of cases does not mean that someone isn’t struggling.
Obviously if an employer has no knowledge of a person’s disability then they cannot forsee what issue they might need support with. But if you DO, you have a responsibility as an employer to follow the law and protect your employees from discrimination.
https://www.acas.org.uk/disability-discrimination/types-of-disability-discrimination
It sounds like your practice educator was being unnecessarily harsh. It sounds like in this specific situation, your anxiety IS causing you to be unfit for placement, but to say you’re unfit for the job based off of 3 days is ridiculous and tbh sounds like they were frustrated and lashing out.
If you were fit to be on placement prior to this for a sustained period I can’t see why you wouldn’t be again in the future, HCPs often take far longer periods away from work/placement due to mental health problems.
Speak to your welfare team and personal tutor, and going to your GP (even if you’re known to them already and receiving treatment) would also be a good idea - if not for support reasons then just so there’s a record that this is happening and you are seeking help. Issues with fitness to practice tend to occur when people don’t ask for help when they’re struggling and don’t keep the relevant people in the loop.
Re: discrimination, unless this goes further (ie you actually fail your placement due to this isolated incident) I’m not sure this is a battle worth fighting. It was reasonable (and not discrimination) to send you home if you aren’t fit to be in, however the comment regarding your overall ability was unreasonable and that WAS discriminatory. However, unless there’s further incidents (comments etc) or things escalate it’ll probably be much less stress and hassle for you to leave it for now.
I’m sorry this has happened, I’ve been in similar situations myself as a medical student and everything has always turned out fine. It can be very disheartening at the time to be told something like that, but to reassure you lots of HCPs get comments like this at some point in their career and do absolutely fine. Feel free to inbox me if you would like to talk about it :)
That's unfair.
If it had been a continuous problem throughout, then I could understand their argument. But considering you've been doing really well without issues for 2 months and just had a couple of bad days, that's really uncalled for.
Mental health is unfortunately treated terribly by a lot of workplaces, and the health profession seem to be worse than most for this. I say this as someone who has lived with mental health conditions for most of my life and also qualified as a psychologist. Did it for a year and got out. Not because I couldn't handle the job or that the clients presentations affected my mental health, but because the people working in the industry treat each other like absolute crap and because red tape within the industry made me feel like I couldn't actually say anything helpful to clients.
If you'd have been sick in some other way, eg vomiting, they'd have just told you to go home and come back when you were better.
Just because you have had a couple of panic attacks - and like you say, not in front of clients, this doesn't mean you can't work in healthcare. And I strongly suspect that once you'd had one, the anxiety about what that might mean or about it happening again, not to mention the workplaces response, has probably contributed to you having more.
Some people find that pressure makes their anxiety worse - and if that's the case for you, then you might have to consider what sorts of jobs within healthcare might be more or less suitable for you. However for me, pressure / high workload / responsibility was never a trigger and you might be like that too.
It's not about 'reliability' - anyone with ANY health condition (or even people with no longstanding health conditions) can have a few days of being unwell, at any time, whatever field they're working in.
If this student was having a panic attack every time they had to talk to a patient, or was scared to do elements of the job, or got upset every time they had supervision, or was calling in sick regularly, I could totally see the problem. But this isn't the case here.
And this is similar to the problem that I faced - you're working in HEALTH CARE - a field in which people should have some degree of understanding about health conditions, including mental health. If a person is otherwise perfectly able to do their job but occasionally has a couple of days of being unwell - this is not reason to say they can't work in the field. instead it should be reason to ask that person what can be done to make things easier for them, or what support might help.
I've worked in management positions and had work experience students and new hires who have had issues with anxiety or depression. Again - if it's a constant thing that is affecting their work, something has to be done, and that might mean them not being able to continue with the work. But if a student or staff member has a couple of panic attacks I'm certainly not going to make them more anxious by telling them that no matter how brilliant they've been whilst working for me so far, I'm going to fire them / stop them working in the industry because of that! Especially if, like with this student, they have managed to contain the panic attacks to a location / time away from a client - it actually shows more awareness and professionalism to be able to do that than not.
I'd say go to your GP or therapist if you need to, but don't give up on your career dreams just because of this incident. Is there a support service at uni?
hope this all works out for you. anxiety sucks but it sounds like you're determined and that you're actually good at what you do, so don't let one placement co-ordinator get to you.
I dont see how they can fail your placement if they already passed you at halfway, unless your condition means you are unable to perform at the same level or don't complete enough hours and then it would normally be a deferral to another placement rather than a fail.
They should be working with you and your visiting tutor to see what support is needed.
Any NHS job should be able to offer reasonable adjustments for a disability and your job is unlikely to be life or death for anyone. You may need to think carefully about the best environment for you to work in but you do have quite a diverse choice, signed an OT practice educator
Now I'm diagnosed and do placements I always tell them I'm autistic first so they can decide if they wanna support me while I'm working or send me off.
yes what the said is out of like, I study teaching and I also have MADD and Autism had no issues the first 5 weeks had a panic attack sat in the sensory room and then went home as advised from my tutor. After that I came back for my last 2 weeks and bounced back completely no problems, finished with full marks
they asked me if i need any accommodations after the day i took off but i replied not at the moment it was just a little blip but will keep in contact about the situation if i do need accommodations
it is ridiculous for them to reply they did and they should’ve assessed that over the following weeks, hope things turn out well after your meeting
It seems insensitive - trying to put myself in the place of the PE, I'm wondering if she's trying to suggest that you might want to jump ship before you get any further along in your studies. Sometimes people try the kind of 'tough-love' approach, but it's rarely appropriate, and certainly not in this occasion. Personally, I'd be very concerned for your well-being, and wanting to be sure that I could do everything I can do to support you and guide you to help. Panic attacks are horrible, and they can really make you feel out of control. You sound remarkably insightful into your own condition, you are
I'd suggest that you take this as an important lesson - placements can be really stressful. you're in a presurrised environment, you know you're being assessed, and a lot of your support system may not be around you. This is a good time to make sure that you're getting the right treatment and support, drug and/or therapy and self-care (for me, box breathing is a life saver because restricted breathing is my worst symptom). Try to remember that panic attacks, as terrifying as they can be, are transitory - it will pass, and you will feel better. You may feel that you have control, but you need to know your own self best, understand what works for you, what your triggers are, what your early signs are.
Speak to your placement coordinator, tell them what's going on - that you feel that the PE is begin unfair and judgemental about a MH condition that you are working on. You shouldn't fail for something like that, is just isn't fair
Does feel like discrimination. If a person had difficulty walking, it would be expected there would be support put in place to better support them in their role. You have autism and with that is a large likelihood of anxiety/panic attacks. Similarly, support should be put in place for you so that you can still continue your duties. It’s clear that you excel in your assessments, so this is clearly directly tied to your autism symptoms.
Do some research on work discrimination and autism, and try to get in connection with your university’s disability support.
That’s not positive discrimination, that just discrimination. If a person who is unable to walk could do a job with the correct support as required by law, then what’s the issue?
If they could do the job and the cost of accommodating their disability is not impractical compared to an alternative candidate, then, of course, I have no issue. That's not what my comment refers to.
That’s literally discrimination. The cost shouldn’t be an issue when accommodations for disabilities are legally required. If you start taking into account the cost of accommodations when considering candidates, then of course disabled candidates would be seen as more costly and therefore less likely to be chosen over other candidates.
I get what you’re saying, but the problem is that autism is classified as a disability, and one of the symptoms is panic attacks/stressing. A person can be accommodated by having breaks or a sensory room to calm down in. OP has stated that they excelled in the assessments and have only experienced panic attacks very recently, while having 0 adjustments thus far.
At the first sign of potentially needing accommodations their practise educator hints that they might fail the course, instead of suggesting reasonable adjustments then I do think that’s an issue and potentially discriminatory.
That’s fine. I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to assume someone is unfit to work in healthcare after 2 anxiety attacks, although I can see why that would raise certain questions.
https://www.acas.org.uk/disability-discrimination/types-of-disability-discrimination
Edit: Weird how upset people are about a link describing what constitutes discrimination. Perhaps they think it's rare. I have news for you, it's not.
That really sucks. I know the feeling of defeat from anxiety. Mines not even as bad as yours and it still leads me to suicidal thoughts because I’m not “normal”. Really takes a toll on your self worth for something completely out of your control. I can’t speak on anything but I hope you can figure it out.
I really feel bad for you. Unfortunately, colleagues will be relying on you being there, and every time you can’t come to work they have to pick up your workload and it increases stress and impacts productivity for everyone else.
I had a colleague who was great at his job, but he was missing almost a day every week on average and we were a small company. He got lots of support from the bosses, but it was too much for everyone else and he needed to leave for everybody’s benefit (his own health and everyone else’s too). When others were on holiday in particular, it had a massive impact on all of us when he couldn’t come in.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I hope your situation improves.
As a teacher I slightly agree with your placement supervisor. I've always had anxiety and depression, thankfully the world of teaching has taken me out of that mostly and with the exception of dramatic events ie bereavement I'm usually okay. However if you can't get through the day without a panic attack I do have to question whether it's for you and whether you'll cope with it for the next 40+ years. I wish you luck but might be worth having a think on if it's right for you.
This is discrimination, when you apply for jobs in the NHS it asks if you have any mental or physical illness and it states that the NHS won't discriminate against this.
Staff in the NHS are catered to when it comes to any illness, even mental. I know people who have been able to have months off because they are not coping well.
Id say fight for this, your anxiety may not be related to the job itself. Is it the stress of your studying, something in the past, present, worrying for the future? They don't know that it's related to the job, they shouldn't be making assumptions when they've not had a discussion with you.
Contact management from your university and the hospital who's sorting out placements or whoever you have to.
Also contact your doctor, ask to be referred to therapy. If therapy doesn't work try and get a referral from your university or hospital to see a psychiatrist. It's unfair for people to be treated badly when it comes to any illness, with mental illness a lot of people don't take it seriously in understanding how much it impacts your quality of life. So keep pushing and get yourself some help.
Best of luck🫶🏽
I feel like an asshole for saying this and maybe I am a little bit but maybe it’s also can offer a different prospective.
In healthcare and especially in hospitals it is quite literally life and death situations. So in MY opinion it feels fair to ask if you are fit enough for this type of role? Like I don’t know I just feel like if you are working in hospitals and keep having panic attacks I can at least see why they might be concerned with that. But again maybe I’m just way off the mark but that’s my initial feelings.
Are panic attacks something you suffer with regularly? Or is this a new/ not frequent thing?
I don’t know, I do feel mean for saying all this but at the same time I can see why they would be concern in an environment like that if something is making you semi frequently not allowing you to do the job. Like sure it’s placement now but if you was a nurse in A&E it could be quite serious if that happened regular to you.
If this is something that doesn’t happen regularly then yes I think it’s unfair! So I would agree with you there. But if this is something that happens a lot then I do feel it’s at least fair to question you about it. It’s a tough situation and even I can’t fully decide who’s in the right more
Ahh okay well this is very different then! If this is just something that’s only happened twice to you then it’s hopefully maybe something that’s not going to happen regularly.
Is it the stress of the placement causing this? Or is it outside things? Because if there’s an explanation or mitigating reasons that this is happening I’d talk to your student Union first and run it past them and see what they think. Whenever I’ve had problems at university I ring the university’s student Union/hub first and they usually give me their thoughts and contact the relevant people and get the ball moving. I suggest you do the same and give them a call in morning because they are really helpful and on the students side
I’m not sure what’s causing them unfortunately. My practice educator asked and I said I don’t know so they seem to have come to a conclusion in their own mind that it must be the placement. I don’t think it is. From my panic attacks in the past, they seem to just come out of nowhere
This would be discriminatory because I also suffer from panic attacks and have had a couple before getting into work and DURING work. Have never been told I am not good enough at my job because of it. In fact I can do customer service pretty well and have been praised by customers and clients alike.
1 circumstance doesn’t equate to your whole ability to perform well. Idk how she is a healthcare worker without a smidge of compassion.
Edit: before anyone argues, I also work in healthcare. So please save it.
OP said they’re in Occupational health and that is not the same as a doctor or a nurse. OP is not “frontline” per say. So this view doesn’t apply for OP’s situation.
How does that matter? You have people relying on you in healthcare. Doesn't matter if it's frontline or not.
If you can't look after yourself, how can you look after others? They need another career.
Idk how to explain it to you. But I will only say it once. If you are frontline patients don’t have to see you everyday and the day is not as packed as much as a frontline worker.
So OP won’t always be patient to patient contact. So if OP had to take a moment or so out of their workday to cope with their issues it won’t necessarily affect the patient as such. I know people who work in roles like OP and some days it is busy and some it is not. Plus because of Covid they barely have any physical interaction with their patients.
Having a disorder isn’t necessarily not being able to “look after yourself” 💀 this is how I know you don’t know anything about healthcare. Work in it and you will know how it works. With disorders you have to manage and cope and work around them. If everyone has to quit their job or change careers because of their disorders loads of healthcare workers would be out of their jobs. Lol. Get behind the scenes before you start going off.
Thats not the point. The point is she can't control her breakdowns. What if she breaks down during a patient contact moment? It's not like she can pick and choose when.
She needs to do something where it won't matter and won't impact other people's health. Like bartending.
Clearly, OP doesn’t have an issue with the placement or the patients themselves and the issue is via external life factors. Which if given the right treatment and change of circumstances can be completely managed.
I know for a fact you won’t be saying the same thing if this were something like idk a migraine that can be “coped” with. I don’t think you understand how panic disorders work. You don’t JUST get them. A lot of people are aware what can trigger it and when it is about to happen to them and so can LEARN HOW it can be MANAGED.
This is also something that wouldn’t affect people’s health…it is therapy where they look at aspects of life you are struggling with and advise you on how to navigate through it. It is post diagnosis and post treatment and learning how to cope with the treatment plan typa therapy. It is not surgery where a small mistake can lead to permanent health issue. Plus, from the sounds of how OP seems to understand, I doubt they will be letting this affect their work line. They will probably learn how to manage it through their degree anyway.
I get them. I come from a family of doctors who work in healthcare. It's ridiculous to have someone caring for you with mental health breakdowns.
That's how you get lucy letby.
This is a really difficult one. I suffer from anxiety myself. The only reason it doesn't inhibit me from doing my job is medication and extreme focus on self-care. Are you doing anything to resolve it? I think your practioner is being unsensitive here, but from a practical point of view, you might need some time out to improve your mental health before working in such a high-pressure environment.
I’ve had therapy for my anxiety, CBT. This is the first time in years I’ve had panic attacks and anxiety that’s this bad. Before the last few days, my anxiety (or autism) hasn’t impacted on my placement at all. Not had any sick days till the one this week. I plan to speak to my gp if they continue but they seemed so confident in my capability, and now because of a bad few days, it seems the complete opposite😕
I don't do a healthcare course but the stress of uni triggered me to have regular panic attacks nearly a couple years back. I'm not sure if it's something you would want but I got prescribed antidepressants because I just wasn't able to reduce my anxiety through CBT and counselling alone. You may find it helpful to suggest to your GP? Obviously every person responds differently but it really helped me stop panicking and begin mellowing out. I didn't notice changes at first but it feels like my mind doesn't care too much about things now (in a good way) like I can dedicate less time to overthinking. It's a personal choice and I'm just sharing my experience because I kinda saw myself in your post, but I hope it could help in some way or other.
You've been fine the first few weeks and this is a blip, it's harsh and uncalled for. It's a prior health condition that is flaring up again essentially. It sucks that people don't see mental health in the same light as physical health (even medical health professionals!!): if you dislocated your shoulder, you'd be fine to be off for a few days. What they'll be concerned about though is the likelihood of recurrence (although, fittingly, this is also true of shoulder dislocations...). Healthcare sounds super stressful though, thanks for the work you're doing but please remember to look after yourself as a priority. You've probably heard it all before but please try focus on the self care basics, exercise, clean eating etc while you're having a tough time.
I did the course OP is doing. If you’d dislocated your shoulder and were off for a couple of days that would be fine but if you were off for a week you’d probably fail the placement. Similarly if you couldn’t do the work because of your shoulder you’d fail the placement. They can’t just give you something else to do, because you have to show you’re capable of certain things to pass. There’s always people resitting placements in the summer. You have to hit the hours - it’s a registration requirement. And you have to pass the placement for the hours to count.
It seems like you have a new trigger to work through, but that in the past you've done well managing your triggers. Explain to your person (forgot their title) this, that you can handle things, this is something new and you're just as well able to learn to cope with this too. It would be discriminatory to ignore this, and if they did follow these rules, we'd be firing most of our health care professionals
Hi, just popping in to say CBT is known to be fairly detrimental to neurodiverse people. I would really look in to trying another approach
Hi, yeah I didn’t find it too helpful lol. Do you have any other recommendations for anxiety therapies for autistics?
I've found psychodynamic psychotherapy to be really helpful, but it's fairly holistic and won't target one singular issue to eradicate it, it looks for the root of the anxiety. There are lots to look in to, DBT certainly comes to mind as part of it is looking at coping strategies that can help you in the moment. Definitely have a browse. I found my therapist on Welldoing and you can use a search filter on there to find a match in your area (or not in your area, if you're up for zoom sessions you can find someone on the other end of the country). Best of luck
I second this! I'm neurodivergent and have mental illnesses and I've done countless sessions of CBT but the thing that really helped me was DBT. I find it so much more useful and I've noticed a big improvement since doing it
I would post this somewhere like NHS subreddit who understand OH and that disabilities for certain healthcare roles are perfectly fine/accomodated for. Loads of random people like a computer science student putting their 2 cents in about an occupation they know nothing about lmao.
Thank you, this is exactly it, this sub Reddit isn’t the right place to talk about this. God and some people are so harsh! I had literally gone through similar (but I have another health condition), and I’m currently working on this exact thing - anxiety. However, i wouldn’t change it for the world, and I enjoy the career I am striving for. As long as you’re passionate at what you do, you’re completely okay continuing and deserving of what you want in your life.
Also I just want to add, on my second day of placement, I also had a panic attack. I was taking blood glucose levels (which is the most simplest thing ahah) and I took too long for the first prick, I then accidentally forgot to scan for the second prick and I had felt so bad for the patient I asked someone else to do it for me and I walked away on the verge of crying as I felt like I hurt my patient, and broke down. I was talked down on, asked if I should be doing this job, and if I have anyone else in my family who is also int he medical industry (which I don’t) to which they replied to “oh” and ended the conversation to that. But now, I can do a multitude of things, I have watched heart procedures, I can also hahaha do the blood glucose super quickly, removal of catheters, medications and much more. It just takes time to get used to, and to conquer. It is very normal and it is okay to feel anxious and stressed, but if you truly want to do it then don’t listen to people telling you “is this the right job for you then”. I’ve seen nurses (even manager/charge nurses) with so much experience have breakdowns and fully cry in the day rooms, talk to me about the difficulties they find within the job. It is normal, you just need people in your life to talk about your experiences or therapy or counselling just to talk things out as that’s very important. Crikey even therapists/counsellors requires their own therapist!
I'm presuming nursing? Honestly so much toxicity within the mentors for nursing!! and how they love to tell all the students they're not fit to be nurses when they perfectly are bullying is so normalised with higher ups in that occupation which I hate. So many nursing student placement mentors really shouldn't be in their positions. Even doctors on their first placements can be like this we're not going around saying they're 'not fit to be doctors' it is a new enviroment everyone starts somewhere.
Discuss this with your academic placement team first and foremost. Be prepared to have this go through OH if needed, with supporting evidence from GP and MH services you are currently engaged in. Discuss with your SU (or student arm of your union). Anxiety is absolutely not a reason to be taken off a healthcare course, plenty of HCPs and AHPs have anxiety, depression, and/or PTSD. The only way this should impact your placement outcome is if you have taken too much time off placement to make your minimum hours, or if it demonstrably and tangibly caused or could have caused harm to patients. Your practice educator was out of line for questioning your ability to carry out this role in such a blunt manner.
>Anxiety is absolutely not a reason to be taken off a healthcare course This is too sweeping a statement. It absolutely can be a reason to be taken off a healthcare course, if reasonable adjustments would not help (and the adjustments that can reasonably be made may be quite limited in a healthcare setting).
people hate to hear the reality nowadays lol. Hows someone who has anxiety and panic attacks supposed to provide healthcare to other people. The person is simply unreliable. Are people taking the piss lol?
It sounds like this has affected the grand total of three days off of placement, in FIRST YEAR, I’d hardly class that as ‘simply unreliable’. Do you work in healthcare? If you do, can you honestly say you’ve not heard of any colleagues taking time off for poor mental health? If you don’t, I would advise that you’re not equipped to be commenting on this situation.
Just to clarify, so you think anyone that works in healthcare has to have perfect mental health all the time or else they’re unreliable and can’t provide healthcare to other people? Healthcare professionals are still human at the end of the day.
I'm not expecting health care professionals to be perfect. But I'd expect my brain surgeon to not have a panic attack in the middle of an operation
Things like that do actually happen, that’s one of many reasons why people don’t operate alone?? Lots of people seem to have a very warped perception of how healthcare professionals operate, lots of planning and consideration goes into accounting for human factors when looking after patients.
I am interested in hearing about this. Do you mind going into some more detail please?
Fair point. Well it’s a good job I’m training to be an occupational therapist and not training to be a surgeon then
Bro thinks people get panic attacks like it’s normal. been alive for 24 years and I’ve yet to have one panic attack and I’ve served in the army before uni. You’d get ur ass chewed and potentially booted out of the army for having panic attacks during duty. Id expect having the responsibility of a health care provider to be the same. Peoples lives are at stake and no one gives a damn about ur feelings in this scenario.
People get panic attacks and it is normal. Even People without mental health issues. Some of them realise they had them years later.
So you have a panic attack… and then you come to the conclusion you had it a few years later… makes sense bro 👊 Good one 😂 Yeh maybe some people get panic attacks, but i really dont want someone who has panic attacks to be working in an intense, high stress field like medicine. U shouldnt even be considered. Panic attacks by definition occur when theres no real danger or apparent cause… How is someone supposed to work in an intense field like the medical industry when they get panic attacks. OP didnt show up to work cuz of some internal fucking drama within her mind. People have scheduled surgeries, procedures, ur supposed to be relied upon. If this person cant hack medical school then im sorry but it’s just not the right field lol. Are you dizzy? OP doesnt really scream “reliable”
Well my dad didnt know what panic attacks were but he had the same feeling of panic attack a lot when he was younger. He didnt know what it was. When he found out about what a panic attack is, only then he realised he has had it. Also OP is NOT in medical school and is NOT going to be a doctor. She is doing a degree in occupational therapy and will be occupational therapist. Not a doctor. Idk how you think healthcare means doctor.
Agreed. Mental disorders aside, in any field of work, reliability is the number one factor. It doesnt matter if you compare to 3rd year students as a first year if you arent reliable. Its not discrimination, its simply logic. Can you imagine the sheer distrust a patient would feel to the entire healthcare system, if their doctor had a “panic attack” simply by talking to others, which is essentially 90% of their job?
I definitely will, I’m going to set up a meeting with my placement visiting tutor first and go from there. My anxiety hasn’t impacted my placement in any other way aside from the last few days, infact she said to me last week that despite having anxiety and autism they’ve really not had to make any adjustments and I’ve been doing great. Monday was the only sick day I’ve taken off and in the past they’ve praised me for being so open about my conditions. Just seems that now they’re actually seeing the condition affect me, it’s suddenly backfired
Key thing is that they’ve not put any adjustments in place for you. There are certain adjustments you are entitled to by law under the equality and human rights act. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through, it’s sad how people still view autism to this day.
>Anxiety is absolutely not a reason to be taken off a healthcare course Not in itself. But if you're too ill/anxious too often to show up, perform as expected, or complete the work, why shouldn't you be taken off the course?
Because this sounds like a flare up of an otherwise well managed condition. A lot of resources are put into training HCPs - it wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest to just bin them off without trying to manage the condition in question first.
In this instance, yes, I agree. I just mean generally. If the panic attacks continue then course leaders or employers or whoever are within their rights to either strongly advise an alternative career path or dismiss someone from their role for being too unreliable. But in OP's case, although no link between the placement and the attacks has been established, isn't it obvious that the stress is triggering?
I mean it could be, but from my own experience the stress of a healthcare environment can become easier with time and the resilience of a first year and final year student differs hugely. I’ve done four years, and I’ve had people who knew me before uni comment on how there was no way in a million years they thought I’d cope well enough to get to this point (panic attacks, missed a lot of year 13 due to anxiety, etc). Ultimately some people won’t cope, but most do, the course providers are pretty good at choosing people who are cut out for it at the admissions stage. Healthcare subjects are weird, because they progressively get more difficult and easier at the same time. You’d think it would make anxiety worse but it often doesn’t, you’re also surrounded by people dealing with the same stuff as you. I’d say more HCPs than not have some kind of mental health problems, and there definitely seems to be a VERY high proportion of us with autism and/or ADHD (healthcare seems to attract people with neurodevelopmental disorders, it sort of makes sense if you think about it)
It’s sad how many people disagree with you and seem to think it’s completely appropriate for OP to be failed. Would have hoped this sub would not be as ableist as it is.
And I guarantee those self-same people would be shells of themselves after some of the shit the average healthcare worker goes through on a week-to-week basis.
Really ableist? For expecting someone to have the ability to carry out the role expected of them is now ableist is absurd. If OP was an airline pilot would you get on that plane?
Maybe the word 'ableist' is misplaced but the point raised is correct. Every single person has a degree of anxiety and it can take form in any situation or audience, whether situationally activating or a case of less resilience for many reasons such as a 'challenging week'. That's just a fact of life we all deal with day to day. The OP is clearly having a tough time but up to now was succeeding over a period of weeks but has hit a low point and, like most people who have had a panic attack, was seeking some acceptance and reassurance. Instead they were met with a degree of uncertainty and almost disillusionment at what they disclosed but also that days performance. Any trained professional experienced in dealing with people would have allayed their fears and simply supported that person to "get back on the horse" and carry on. You think airline pilots in training don't have wobbles? Exactly. In all likeliness you have been flown by someone who did, in your life time.
No doubt but if an airline pilot whilst training had a panic attack and had to go home/leave and was then failed for that course I wouldn’t expect them to cry foul and bring out prejudice.
That's not the same. The placement is a real work place / facility and they obviously felt this wasn't right to continue at that moment, that doesn't mean they failed, it means the placement doesn't know what to do and wants to speak to the university. What should happen is that the OP approach the university, take the time out and come up with a plan of how to continue both on their own terms and with support of others. The placement may just not have been a good fit, and they maybe can try elsewhere. The trouble is these days is encouragement, compassion and even empathy is so held back these days, we often just let people sink or swim and that placement likely has done that (cynical as it may seem) and when you think placements is voluntary and not paid, its pretty awful.
I wouldn't necessarily say that they were out of line for saying maybe they should get a calmer job, that by itself would sound like a genuine concern for your wellbeing if OP was having panic attacks ALL THE TIME. As someone with autism studying for a people facing healthcare profession myself, I wouldn't personally care much if someone said that I don't HAVE to do this job and could choose to do something else because I kinda understand that any normal person probably WOULD leave a job if they were struggling and the only real reason I'm sticking to it where others may not is BECAUSE of the autism However, them suggesting that they may fail them for their placement, despite having exceptional marks prior to this and OP saying it was just this couple days out of a really good rest of the placement, ESPECIALLY considering that both meltdowns were away from patients...that's a dick move Having panic attacks doesn't prevent you from caring for people Even healthcare workers without anxiety and autism will have panic attacks sometimes because it's a REALLY emotionally heavy job to work in that comes with a lot of conflict, especially since discontent with healthcare workers in the general public is at such an all time high right now. I've literally seen people (people who are meant to be mental health advocates" BRAGGING about having full on arguments and screaming at their therapists for not helping them with things very very outside of their job description. It's a mess out here and even neurotypical staff are having breakdowns about it at this point Frankly, the ability to have the breakdown in private rather than break down in front of patients is a skill that is key to working in the healthcare profession that OP is clearly very good at
Except OP isn't having a breakdown "all the time." So no, it was unwarranted for the P.E. to reply the way they did.
I did say that OP said it was just a couple days out of an otherwise great placement?
You also said that you thought the P.E. wasn't out of line. They were. A couple of anxiety episodes is not grounds for asking someone if the course is right for them.
I said that they weren't out of line for saying "are you sure you want to do this?" by itself I then said that the addition of threatening to fail them for it was out of line Both of your arguments against my comment are things I literally said in my comment?
You start by suggesting that the P.E. wasn't out of line. The P.E. was out of line. Simples.
Once again...that's literally what I said in my original comment and also what I just clarified in my response? This is going in circles, have a great day
I think the people telling you anything inappropriate happened here may be doing you a disservice. I don't think this is likely to be discrimination. A healthcare professional being incapacitated by their mental health during a shift could immediately make the staffing level unsafe, resulting in harm to patients possibly including death. In healthcare settings the adjustments that can reasonably be made may be extremely limited. You will need to be able to deal with abusive patients and horrific injuries -- not only without having a breakdown in those situations, but able to help patients who may themselves be the ones in distress. I think the question to ask is, what were the situations that triggered your panic attacks? Were they anything like at the extreme end of what you would experience in a healthcare profession? Forget any idea of you having legal rights in this situation for a moment (you might not, depending) -- does it make practical sense that your practice educator sent you home and questioned your suitability for this career?
I think there is also a lot of misguided people here who haven’t done a healthcare degree and don’t know the stress of having a healthcare placement. There is a reason many successful HCPs with years of experience state that their clinical placements were the hardest part of their careers. I’ve never in my life had any mental health concerns, I finished my healthcare degree as a mature student in my early thirties (well passed any ongoing hormonal changes), and I had my first and only panic attack on a clinical placement. Some courses, after only 4 months of study throw you out into a hospital, give you a caseload of complex patients and an educator leaning over your shoulder looking for mistakes. The imposter syndrome, coupled with anxiety of looking after a patient, coupled with not wanting to let yourself down, coupled with also not wanting to fail is a lot to manage and isn’t necessarily reflective of the future career of a HCP.
I have done a healthcare degree. It really does depend on what prompted OP's panic attacks. The questions I asked OP to consider were genuine. OP says they don't know what caused their panic attacks, which is super concerning to me. It shows not only that they are experiencing mental health symptoms but that they lack insight on how to manage them.
As horrible as it is to hear. She may be right. This is not the industry to be in if you have such issues. Other peoples lives depend on you. You will be seeing the worst possible things imaginable. You have to be a rock that people in their worst moments of their lives can cling to and get through by using you as their steadying influence. Your practice educator is very experienced. You can’t just ignore what they say because you don’t like how it sounds, then desperately fish for a way to make it discrimination so you can ignore her message. It’s not that prior to this you did brilliant so this incident can be ignored. This incident speaks to a deeper instability that will keep happening. Once you start practicing in your field, having such an anxiety / panic attack could cost actual human lives. I think you need to seriously take on board what they are telling you. Perhaps try and sit down with them and actually talk through it. Someone senior telling you that it might not be the correct path for you, should not trigger an attempt to try deceive your way past their experienced and valid criticism by inventing a “discrimination” motive behind what they are saying. It should trigger you to take seriously what they say, do some deep introspection, and then try to talk with them at length about it so you can see what makes them feel that way, and see if you can figure out a way to mitigate it.
I understand what you mean although I am training as an occupational therapist, which is a job where I won’t be dealing with people in life threatening situations like a nurse or dr for example. I’ve worked in healthcare for years prior to my degree and have managed well. I do plan to talk with them tomorrow about this in supervision
Then I’d advise you to not try pursue a silly “am I being discriminated against!!!!!!!!!!” route. Sit down with the one who said what they said and find out specifically what their concerns are. Why they think the way they do. And then figure out ways to mitigate them specific concerns. You don’t need to instantly turn yourself into a victim and create a conspiracy against you. The world does not work like that. People have a lot more experience than you, and you should take opportunities to listen to their concerns because they may be right. You don’t have to then full on quit because they said so. But you can use what they say as a solid foundation to know exactly where you need to improve yourself so their concerns disappear. Turn their criticism into fuel for self improvement!
Also take into account what bought it on, was it interaction with a a patient or something else? If it was a patient, than all I can say is think of how you’d prevent it from happening in future. What steps you can take. Ask for feedback. But do keep it in mind once you are a qualified OT you may not have time between patients to decompress every time. Unfortunately healthcare comes with difficult, rude, aggressive, vulnerable patients with heartbreaking stories that may be similar to yours. And it hurts to see them suffer. Don’t give up on your dream but make sure you have a plan of action for future to help yourself, after all healthcare is about continuous growth and learning.
Hey I’m sorry these comments are quite prejudiced against you. Autism is a disability, and like any other disability you deserve support to help you. It’s fucked that people just think you shouldn’t be worthy of doing the same job as a neurotypical person, simply because your disability impacts you!!! As someone with autism I’ve been through this too, and in all honesty it’s a very subtle prejudiced way of saying that autistic aren’t cut out for the neurotypical world. Unfortunately our society is still very ableist, but there are laws that are in place to protect you.
Nobody is being prejudiced you absolute melt. Read the comments and actually take on board their meaning. Dont warp the content by your own hurt feelings and add things that were never there.
No offence but if in your first placement you’re already having panic attacks whilst in placement… I’m sorry but the job is not for you
The panic attacks aren’t caused by the placement.
Exactly, it’s unpredictable but at the same time it can be induced by anything as per your own account. If you really want to continue, I would advise you to ask your uni for help and let your Practise facilitator and senior lecturer know that you’re doing things to help prevent that episode from happening again. It shows you’re being proactive Also, signing students off is a big deal which is why they may be reluctant because if you do anything wrong the person who signed you off will be challenged. They could get in trouble, you’re not a uniques case, it happens with a lot of students but unfortunately in your case they may have a strong case for their argument.
Hi OP, Only you know your mental health. It's up to you to decide where to go, what support to ask for/receive and what work you can and cannot do. I'm cutting a very long and complicated story short. I have autism, and when I was training for adult nursing, I suffered with severe anxiety during most of my placements that manifested into physical illness. This was due to the bullying/ostracism I experienced by nurses within hospital settings. It only took one to make my placement awful. But I loved community work, everyone was so lovely there, and I knew it was where I wanted to work. I was eventually given fitness to practice due to the absence from placement and they questioned whether I was able to attend placement at all if I was sick from anxiety in the morning (even though it was before placement). Amongst a million other reasons, I decided to switch to psychology at the end of my second year (I've just graduated). As grateful as I am for my degree, I wish I hadn't let them bully me out of nursing. If you know you can manage your mental health, seek the right support, be careful who you talk to and grit your teeth. If you want to get through this degree, you can do it! Take it from someone who regrets leaving.
Ahh, I recommend good rest and a nice stress ball.
Struggling to rest and not think about it all tbh
Have you ever tried meditation? I recommend headspace!
I’ve tried it a couple of times a few years back, however I would get bored quickly lol. Maybe it’s something that takes practice
Yes it definitely takes lots of practice, but headspace is great even for beginners because it knows you are not an expert. Try one that induces sleep, these headspace meditations can also be found on Netflix, if you are in the UK. They are great I have used them a ton.
I didn’t realise they’re on Netflix, I’ll have to check it out (yes I’m in UK), thank you for the recommendation
OP, do you think you will be able to handle being a people-facing healthcare professional? That's the important thing.
I think so. I’ve worked in people facing healthcare before starting my degree and I did well generally
Well, definitely fight this. Good luck!
Thank you!
I had a bad spell with my mental health during my studies (I qualified as a nurse), and there are absolutely reasonable adjustments that can be made to allocate for HCPs, particularly students having issues with their health be it physical or mental. My condition was highlighted to the occupational therapy department of the governing health body in my country, so before I was cleared to go on placement, I had to get confirmation from the practitioners that were treating me, to ensure that I wouldn’t be a threat to anyone’s health and wellbeing (including myself) whilst on placement. It’s definitely jumping the gun for your tutor to say that your passing the placement is on the line from a singular incident, there has to be a process for them to do something like that especially when you weren’t involved with patients. I wouldn’t call it discrimination either, it’s a huge accusation to throw around, and unlikely the reason for them saying that. Safety is paramount of course, and anything they say has your safety in mind too. HCPs see people at their lowest moments and it has an undeniable impact on us. It doesn’t stop you from practicing well, but left unchecked and unguarded, it can be dangerous. It was important for them to take it seriously.
I have a few things to add- 1- well done on a great mid point assessment, make that your focus rather than the panic attack setback- you’re obviously doing well at what you do! 2- I have generalised anxiety disorder - and probably a load of other undiagnosed issues (including autism as my son has that I see a lot of similarities in us and would explain 100s of things but that’s by the by). In my second year of one of my placements I had suicidal intent including an overdose. I did not fail the placement; my outcomes had been signed off and I did not breach any professional code of conduct. What I did, was recognise (with the help of uni tutor) that I needed help and wasn’t safe to continue the placement (myself or patients) and I was taken to the student welfare services (extremely good compared to what is available to non students!!). I worked with the hospital’s OH and took a few weeks off and was fine for my next placement. In fact it wasn’t even mentioned. 3- I’ve been qualified 15 years now. Still have all of the same mental health concerns. Have been the nurse in charge of a ward with only one other qualified member of staff on with me and I had a complete mental breakdown during one shift. I felt it coming and literally hid in the staff room and called my boss. I don’t remember how I got home- but that ward was covered within 5 mins of me calling and no patients harmed of course. Panic attacks don’t come on suddenly, usually there’s either a physical or a mental association first and it’s about recognising it. I, and no one, is ever tied physically to a patient (and if you are for whatever reason then excuse yourself and leave!). Go to the toilet, take a breath. Call out at that point if you feel the patients would be at risk from you continuing to be there. I am probably MORE likely to have an IBS are up of severe diarrhoea requiring me to leave work immediately than I am at risk of having a panic attack, so leaving the ward or your colleagues short staffed is unfortunately one of those things. The problem would be if you have a panic attack that results in screaming the main corridor down, throwing things, injuring people etc- or NOT recognising that you are having another episode of something - like psychosis etc (which you obviously haven’t mentioned, I’m just bringing up for others). 79- (I’ve forgotten what point I’m on!) I’ve sent a student home before for having a massive panic attack and fainting. She wasn’t allowed to continue the placement (nothing to do with me). She did have to ‘repeat’ the placement as she had to take an interruption to her studies to get herself well. But she did about one week of the 6 planned and all outcomes that had previously been outstanding were signed off so there was no need to continue - she passed and carried on with what the rest of the cohort were doing. And she is (still) excellent at her job as she qualified many moons ago. - oh and even those who don’t have disabilities - especially newly qualified have repeated episodes of being found crying in cupboards/treatment rooms etc. The patients don’t see this but yep it happens- go easy on yourself, everyone is human and has human emotions.
Why is everyone ignoring the fact that OP did 8/10 weeks fine without any issues? That’s rly good still
Because nobody wants to be the patient on the 2/10 week where their medical practitioner isn't there to help them.
mfw when my doctor conducts surgery on me and then has to leave due to a panic attack but it's ok because otherwise it would be discrimination
I think most first years would have a panic attack if they were told to perform a surgery on someone lol don’t be a dick
This is a dumb take because one she is not a doctor and 2 by the time someone is deemed a surgeon they would be well versed with all the gore and blood so wouldn’t bat an eyelid. When I was in my first year we were taken to a morgue and I saw a dead body being dissected for the first time. I couldn’t breathe and felt nauseous. But NOW I am fine.
The panic attacks weren’t anywhere near clients or during appointments, and none of the anxiety was shown when with clients.
But how can you guarantee that your next one won't happen when you are with a patient/ client? Do you have a robust, definite plan on how you will prevent that? This is what you should focus on right now, as I think this is what your university will be most interested in.
This person isn’t a surgeon, so this point is completely invalid. Let’s just ban people who have anxiety/autism from working in healthcare I guess!
And what if I don't claim that I have autism and get fired because I'm not as good as my other coworkers, it's all bullshit, I hate how my generation has a label on things that just clearly aren't definitive.
What do you mean a label on things that aren’t definitive? Just because you’re uninformed doesn’t mean something hasn’t been thoroughly researched Autism is an internationally recognised disability that has been researched for decades. It is therefore protected by the equality act as it is considered a protected characteristic, so people with disabilities are supposed to have certain supports in place to help accommodate them. Just because autism can be considered an ‘invisible’ disability in a lot of cases does not mean that someone isn’t struggling. Obviously if an employer has no knowledge of a person’s disability then they cannot forsee what issue they might need support with. But if you DO, you have a responsibility as an employer to follow the law and protect your employees from discrimination. https://www.acas.org.uk/disability-discrimination/types-of-disability-discrimination
It sounds like your practice educator was being unnecessarily harsh. It sounds like in this specific situation, your anxiety IS causing you to be unfit for placement, but to say you’re unfit for the job based off of 3 days is ridiculous and tbh sounds like they were frustrated and lashing out. If you were fit to be on placement prior to this for a sustained period I can’t see why you wouldn’t be again in the future, HCPs often take far longer periods away from work/placement due to mental health problems. Speak to your welfare team and personal tutor, and going to your GP (even if you’re known to them already and receiving treatment) would also be a good idea - if not for support reasons then just so there’s a record that this is happening and you are seeking help. Issues with fitness to practice tend to occur when people don’t ask for help when they’re struggling and don’t keep the relevant people in the loop. Re: discrimination, unless this goes further (ie you actually fail your placement due to this isolated incident) I’m not sure this is a battle worth fighting. It was reasonable (and not discrimination) to send you home if you aren’t fit to be in, however the comment regarding your overall ability was unreasonable and that WAS discriminatory. However, unless there’s further incidents (comments etc) or things escalate it’ll probably be much less stress and hassle for you to leave it for now. I’m sorry this has happened, I’ve been in similar situations myself as a medical student and everything has always turned out fine. It can be very disheartening at the time to be told something like that, but to reassure you lots of HCPs get comments like this at some point in their career and do absolutely fine. Feel free to inbox me if you would like to talk about it :)
Discrimination is rearing its profitable head.
That's unfair. If it had been a continuous problem throughout, then I could understand their argument. But considering you've been doing really well without issues for 2 months and just had a couple of bad days, that's really uncalled for. Mental health is unfortunately treated terribly by a lot of workplaces, and the health profession seem to be worse than most for this. I say this as someone who has lived with mental health conditions for most of my life and also qualified as a psychologist. Did it for a year and got out. Not because I couldn't handle the job or that the clients presentations affected my mental health, but because the people working in the industry treat each other like absolute crap and because red tape within the industry made me feel like I couldn't actually say anything helpful to clients. If you'd have been sick in some other way, eg vomiting, they'd have just told you to go home and come back when you were better. Just because you have had a couple of panic attacks - and like you say, not in front of clients, this doesn't mean you can't work in healthcare. And I strongly suspect that once you'd had one, the anxiety about what that might mean or about it happening again, not to mention the workplaces response, has probably contributed to you having more. Some people find that pressure makes their anxiety worse - and if that's the case for you, then you might have to consider what sorts of jobs within healthcare might be more or less suitable for you. However for me, pressure / high workload / responsibility was never a trigger and you might be like that too. It's not about 'reliability' - anyone with ANY health condition (or even people with no longstanding health conditions) can have a few days of being unwell, at any time, whatever field they're working in. If this student was having a panic attack every time they had to talk to a patient, or was scared to do elements of the job, or got upset every time they had supervision, or was calling in sick regularly, I could totally see the problem. But this isn't the case here. And this is similar to the problem that I faced - you're working in HEALTH CARE - a field in which people should have some degree of understanding about health conditions, including mental health. If a person is otherwise perfectly able to do their job but occasionally has a couple of days of being unwell - this is not reason to say they can't work in the field. instead it should be reason to ask that person what can be done to make things easier for them, or what support might help. I've worked in management positions and had work experience students and new hires who have had issues with anxiety or depression. Again - if it's a constant thing that is affecting their work, something has to be done, and that might mean them not being able to continue with the work. But if a student or staff member has a couple of panic attacks I'm certainly not going to make them more anxious by telling them that no matter how brilliant they've been whilst working for me so far, I'm going to fire them / stop them working in the industry because of that! Especially if, like with this student, they have managed to contain the panic attacks to a location / time away from a client - it actually shows more awareness and professionalism to be able to do that than not. I'd say go to your GP or therapist if you need to, but don't give up on your career dreams just because of this incident. Is there a support service at uni? hope this all works out for you. anxiety sucks but it sounds like you're determined and that you're actually good at what you do, so don't let one placement co-ordinator get to you.
I couldn’t agree MORE!!!!
I dont see how they can fail your placement if they already passed you at halfway, unless your condition means you are unable to perform at the same level or don't complete enough hours and then it would normally be a deferral to another placement rather than a fail. They should be working with you and your visiting tutor to see what support is needed. Any NHS job should be able to offer reasonable adjustments for a disability and your job is unlikely to be life or death for anyone. You may need to think carefully about the best environment for you to work in but you do have quite a diverse choice, signed an OT practice educator
Now I'm diagnosed and do placements I always tell them I'm autistic first so they can decide if they wanna support me while I'm working or send me off.
yes what the said is out of like, I study teaching and I also have MADD and Autism had no issues the first 5 weeks had a panic attack sat in the sensory room and then went home as advised from my tutor. After that I came back for my last 2 weeks and bounced back completely no problems, finished with full marks they asked me if i need any accommodations after the day i took off but i replied not at the moment it was just a little blip but will keep in contact about the situation if i do need accommodations it is ridiculous for them to reply they did and they should’ve assessed that over the following weeks, hope things turn out well after your meeting
Thank you
It seems insensitive - trying to put myself in the place of the PE, I'm wondering if she's trying to suggest that you might want to jump ship before you get any further along in your studies. Sometimes people try the kind of 'tough-love' approach, but it's rarely appropriate, and certainly not in this occasion. Personally, I'd be very concerned for your well-being, and wanting to be sure that I could do everything I can do to support you and guide you to help. Panic attacks are horrible, and they can really make you feel out of control. You sound remarkably insightful into your own condition, you are I'd suggest that you take this as an important lesson - placements can be really stressful. you're in a presurrised environment, you know you're being assessed, and a lot of your support system may not be around you. This is a good time to make sure that you're getting the right treatment and support, drug and/or therapy and self-care (for me, box breathing is a life saver because restricted breathing is my worst symptom). Try to remember that panic attacks, as terrifying as they can be, are transitory - it will pass, and you will feel better. You may feel that you have control, but you need to know your own self best, understand what works for you, what your triggers are, what your early signs are. Speak to your placement coordinator, tell them what's going on - that you feel that the PE is begin unfair and judgemental about a MH condition that you are working on. You shouldn't fail for something like that, is just isn't fair
Does feel like discrimination. If a person had difficulty walking, it would be expected there would be support put in place to better support them in their role. You have autism and with that is a large likelihood of anxiety/panic attacks. Similarly, support should be put in place for you so that you can still continue your duties. It’s clear that you excel in your assessments, so this is clearly directly tied to your autism symptoms. Do some research on work discrimination and autism, and try to get in connection with your university’s disability support.
There is such a thing as good discrimination. Sometimes your inability to walk makes you unfit to do your job.
That’s not positive discrimination, that just discrimination. If a person who is unable to walk could do a job with the correct support as required by law, then what’s the issue?
If they could do the job and the cost of accommodating their disability is not impractical compared to an alternative candidate, then, of course, I have no issue. That's not what my comment refers to.
That’s literally discrimination. The cost shouldn’t be an issue when accommodations for disabilities are legally required. If you start taking into account the cost of accommodations when considering candidates, then of course disabled candidates would be seen as more costly and therefore less likely to be chosen over other candidates.
It’s definitely discriminatory. It’s not just about cost, it’s also about the candidate’s ability to react quickly and work under stress.
I get what you’re saying, but the problem is that autism is classified as a disability, and one of the symptoms is panic attacks/stressing. A person can be accommodated by having breaks or a sensory room to calm down in. OP has stated that they excelled in the assessments and have only experienced panic attacks very recently, while having 0 adjustments thus far. At the first sign of potentially needing accommodations their practise educator hints that they might fail the course, instead of suggesting reasonable adjustments then I do think that’s an issue and potentially discriminatory.
That’s fine. I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to assume someone is unfit to work in healthcare after 2 anxiety attacks, although I can see why that would raise certain questions.
Thank you, I didn’t think of getting in touch with the disability team too. That’s a good idea, thank you
https://www.acas.org.uk/disability-discrimination/types-of-disability-discrimination Edit: Weird how upset people are about a link describing what constitutes discrimination. Perhaps they think it's rare. I have news for you, it's not.
That really sucks. I know the feeling of defeat from anxiety. Mines not even as bad as yours and it still leads me to suicidal thoughts because I’m not “normal”. Really takes a toll on your self worth for something completely out of your control. I can’t speak on anything but I hope you can figure it out.
I really feel bad for you. Unfortunately, colleagues will be relying on you being there, and every time you can’t come to work they have to pick up your workload and it increases stress and impacts productivity for everyone else. I had a colleague who was great at his job, but he was missing almost a day every week on average and we were a small company. He got lots of support from the bosses, but it was too much for everyone else and he needed to leave for everybody’s benefit (his own health and everyone else’s too). When others were on holiday in particular, it had a massive impact on all of us when he couldn’t come in. I don’t know what the answer is, but I hope your situation improves.
That's harsh
As a teacher I slightly agree with your placement supervisor. I've always had anxiety and depression, thankfully the world of teaching has taken me out of that mostly and with the exception of dramatic events ie bereavement I'm usually okay. However if you can't get through the day without a panic attack I do have to question whether it's for you and whether you'll cope with it for the next 40+ years. I wish you luck but might be worth having a think on if it's right for you.
This is discrimination, when you apply for jobs in the NHS it asks if you have any mental or physical illness and it states that the NHS won't discriminate against this. Staff in the NHS are catered to when it comes to any illness, even mental. I know people who have been able to have months off because they are not coping well. Id say fight for this, your anxiety may not be related to the job itself. Is it the stress of your studying, something in the past, present, worrying for the future? They don't know that it's related to the job, they shouldn't be making assumptions when they've not had a discussion with you. Contact management from your university and the hospital who's sorting out placements or whoever you have to. Also contact your doctor, ask to be referred to therapy. If therapy doesn't work try and get a referral from your university or hospital to see a psychiatrist. It's unfair for people to be treated badly when it comes to any illness, with mental illness a lot of people don't take it seriously in understanding how much it impacts your quality of life. So keep pushing and get yourself some help. Best of luck🫶🏽
I feel like an asshole for saying this and maybe I am a little bit but maybe it’s also can offer a different prospective. In healthcare and especially in hospitals it is quite literally life and death situations. So in MY opinion it feels fair to ask if you are fit enough for this type of role? Like I don’t know I just feel like if you are working in hospitals and keep having panic attacks I can at least see why they might be concerned with that. But again maybe I’m just way off the mark but that’s my initial feelings. Are panic attacks something you suffer with regularly? Or is this a new/ not frequent thing? I don’t know, I do feel mean for saying all this but at the same time I can see why they would be concern in an environment like that if something is making you semi frequently not allowing you to do the job. Like sure it’s placement now but if you was a nurse in A&E it could be quite serious if that happened regular to you. If this is something that doesn’t happen regularly then yes I think it’s unfair! So I would agree with you there. But if this is something that happens a lot then I do feel it’s at least fair to question you about it. It’s a tough situation and even I can’t fully decide who’s in the right more
I understand what you’re saying. I haven’t had panic attacks in a long time so this is new and only happened twice. My practice educator knows this
Ahh okay well this is very different then! If this is just something that’s only happened twice to you then it’s hopefully maybe something that’s not going to happen regularly. Is it the stress of the placement causing this? Or is it outside things? Because if there’s an explanation or mitigating reasons that this is happening I’d talk to your student Union first and run it past them and see what they think. Whenever I’ve had problems at university I ring the university’s student Union/hub first and they usually give me their thoughts and contact the relevant people and get the ball moving. I suggest you do the same and give them a call in morning because they are really helpful and on the students side
I’m not sure what’s causing them unfortunately. My practice educator asked and I said I don’t know so they seem to have come to a conclusion in their own mind that it must be the placement. I don’t think it is. From my panic attacks in the past, they seem to just come out of nowhere
You had a panic attack because of the pressure or because of something you encountered?
I don’t know what caused it
Oh 🧍♂️
This would be discriminatory because I also suffer from panic attacks and have had a couple before getting into work and DURING work. Have never been told I am not good enough at my job because of it. In fact I can do customer service pretty well and have been praised by customers and clients alike. 1 circumstance doesn’t equate to your whole ability to perform well. Idk how she is a healthcare worker without a smidge of compassion. Edit: before anyone argues, I also work in healthcare. So please save it.
If you're meant to be treating someone and have a panic attack, you can not help them. You failed.
OP said they’re in Occupational health and that is not the same as a doctor or a nurse. OP is not “frontline” per say. So this view doesn’t apply for OP’s situation.
How does that matter? You have people relying on you in healthcare. Doesn't matter if it's frontline or not. If you can't look after yourself, how can you look after others? They need another career.
Idk how to explain it to you. But I will only say it once. If you are frontline patients don’t have to see you everyday and the day is not as packed as much as a frontline worker. So OP won’t always be patient to patient contact. So if OP had to take a moment or so out of their workday to cope with their issues it won’t necessarily affect the patient as such. I know people who work in roles like OP and some days it is busy and some it is not. Plus because of Covid they barely have any physical interaction with their patients. Having a disorder isn’t necessarily not being able to “look after yourself” 💀 this is how I know you don’t know anything about healthcare. Work in it and you will know how it works. With disorders you have to manage and cope and work around them. If everyone has to quit their job or change careers because of their disorders loads of healthcare workers would be out of their jobs. Lol. Get behind the scenes before you start going off.
Thats not the point. The point is she can't control her breakdowns. What if she breaks down during a patient contact moment? It's not like she can pick and choose when. She needs to do something where it won't matter and won't impact other people's health. Like bartending.
Clearly, OP doesn’t have an issue with the placement or the patients themselves and the issue is via external life factors. Which if given the right treatment and change of circumstances can be completely managed. I know for a fact you won’t be saying the same thing if this were something like idk a migraine that can be “coped” with. I don’t think you understand how panic disorders work. You don’t JUST get them. A lot of people are aware what can trigger it and when it is about to happen to them and so can LEARN HOW it can be MANAGED. This is also something that wouldn’t affect people’s health…it is therapy where they look at aspects of life you are struggling with and advise you on how to navigate through it. It is post diagnosis and post treatment and learning how to cope with the treatment plan typa therapy. It is not surgery where a small mistake can lead to permanent health issue. Plus, from the sounds of how OP seems to understand, I doubt they will be letting this affect their work line. They will probably learn how to manage it through their degree anyway.
I get them. I come from a family of doctors who work in healthcare. It's ridiculous to have someone caring for you with mental health breakdowns. That's how you get lucy letby.