School of Health & Wellbeing

The West of Scotland Clinical Psychology training programme, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, has undergone many changes but none so rapid and unexpected as since the COVID-19 pandemic began, as Breda Cullen explains.

This is the 60^th anniversary year of the West of Scotland Clinical Psychology training programme. The programme has undergone many changes in that time, but none so rapid and unexpected as what we have experienced since the COVID-19 pandemic began, as Breda Cullen explains. 

We realised early on that adaptations would be needed, but it still felt like a shock to receive the email on Saturday 14 March 2020 that on-campus teaching would cease that Monday. We have been accustomed to live videoconferencing links between teaching spaces in Glasgow and Inverness, where some of our trainees are based, but we had never before delivered teaching by fully remote means. By a stroke of good fortune, the lecturers scheduled to teach our trainees that first day were librarians with plenty of experience of digital delivery. I can’t think of a better person than MVLS librarian Paul Cannon to lead our first Zoom lecture, and his expert tips were just what the programme team needed as we found our feet with online teaching. As the weeks have gone on this has not been without its difficulties: many of our lecturers are NHS staff for whom Zoom is not always ideal, and it is hard to replicate interactive workshop sessions. Despite this, staff and trainees have risen to the challenge and have learned from each other how to make it a success.

Other changes quickly followed. We held our first Moodle exam on 19 March and our first set of remote vivas on 02 April. In the last week of April, we interviewed almost 80 candidates online for the 2020/21 intake – a huge logistical challenge, completed with barely a hitch. All this is testament to the incredible dedication of all academic, clinical and student support staff, who have put in countless extra hours to get things done. Our trainees have also proved remarkably resilient in the face of multiple changes and uncertainties in both their academic and clinical work, and many have found themselves at the front line of clinical service delivery, working with new populations and in new ways that were never envisaged in their training plans. They are currently facing barriers and delays to their research work, necessitating creative reformulation of project proposals and swift adaptation to unfamiliar datasets. Being embedded in IHW has helped us greatly in navigating these problems, and as the programme’s Research Director I am so grateful to all those who have stepped in with offers of data sharing and collaboration.

The relentless pace of work in the first weeks of lockdown meant that I have not had much time to reflect on this new way of working. Working from home has been a frequent habit of mine for a long time, and I am lucky to have a comfortable and quiet work environment here, but this still feels very different. I realise now that time spent in the classroom and in meetings provided crucial respite from my screen, but now there is no escape. There is something especially uncanny about staring at faces in a Zoom meeting without ever making eye contact. Even by Zoom, though, frequent meetings have helped me feel connected, and daily email briefings from Programme Director Hamish McLeod have been a hugely valued point of contact for all trainees and staff, especially for those of us who are relatively new to the team (one of whom joined after lockdown). I do find it difficult at times to calibrate my sense of ‘productivity’, especially when so much of what I am doing feels like reinventing existing processes just to keep pace with normal programme delivery, and my own research work has largely been sidelined. Honest reflections on these realities (like this widely-shared article) have helped me gain some perspective.

As we look ahead, I hope what we have achieved so far will spur us on to develop the DClinPsy programme in new and flexible ways, inspired by the example of blended learning set by the MSc in Global Mental Health and other IHW programmes. We are now preparing for 29 new trainees to begin the programme in October – our biggest ever intake. Whether virtually or in real life, I know they will receive a warm welcome as they join the IHW community.

Breda Cullen
Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology (Mental Health and Wellbeing)

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First published: 14 March 2018