Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 20

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Today we are chatting to the incredible Professor Ingram Wright who is a Clinical NeuroPsychologist and thoroughly interesting chap. We discuss all kinds of stuff from pandemic restrictions and its impact upon psychology to traits which make a great Aspiring psychologist and more.

The Highlights:

00:29: Introduction for topic and guest speaker

01:25: Ingram Wright's role

02:17: We all have imposter syndrome!

02:27: Getting into Neuropsychology

06:05: Stumbling upon your passion

08:27: Impact of COVID

12:05: Relating to impact of COVID on service users  

14:08: Positive implications of COVID on practice

17:04: Tips for supervising

17:59: A podcast run by aspiring psychologists

18:50: Not rushing the journey

16:37: Any family friendly courses out there?

17:29: An offer for training and reflecting on parenting

18:57: Improving access to psychology

20:39: Focusing on end goals not the processes

21:36: Bad weather in psychology

24:24: Focusing on the needs of the aspiring psychologist

28:44: Building neuro experience

32:15: Challenges of neuro

34:52: Ingram Wright’s podcast: The Neuro Clinic

38:14: Connecting with Ingram Wright

38:44: Thank you, subscribe and connect with me!

40:46: Join our membership group!

Links:

Follow Professor Ingram Wright on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theneuroclinic

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Transcript for ep 20 of the aspiring psychologist podcast with Dr Marianne Trent and Professor Ingram Wright

Hi, welcome along to the aspiring psychologist podcast. Today, we are going to be talking to professor Ingram Wright. He is a clinical psychologist, a neuro specialist, and academic. He is also a bit of a philosopher, um, and I found the conversation really inspiring. Um, and I hope that you will do too, um, at points, um, his wifi, um, was not too, um, not too good. Um, and so there's a little bit in parts, but I hope that you, um, will persevere with it, um, because it's only affected in very tiny patches. Um, yeah, I hope you find it super useful and I will, um, chat to you on the other side. Okay. Hi, welcome along to my guest for today. We are joined by professor Ingram. Hi, thank you for joining us.

Hi, Marianne.

Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got into it, if that's okay.

Yeah, fine. So I'm, um, currently head of psychology services at, uh, in Bristol, at university hospitals, Bristol and Western. So we're a large trust in Bristol. Um, I'm a pediatric neuro psychologist. So in my NHS role clinically, I work with children with acquired brain injuries of various kinds. Um, I've got links with the university of Bristol. So we run a, a neuropsychology training course for people who are qualified as clinical psychologists, and then want to go on to do specialist training in neuropsychology, and also recently appointed by the BPSs chair of the division of neuropsychology. So I represent neuropsychology nationally from a clinical point of view.

That's who I am.

Gosh !

Keeps me busy Marianne.

I've got imposter syndrome now. Really

Well. We've all got imposter syndrome. Haven't we? I didn't say I, I was capable in all of those roles.

Okay. Well, I am confident that you are, so we very, very lucky to have you with us, but we first crossed path on, um, Twitter. Um, hope that's not else in you that you are on Twitter. No, no, no. Um, uh, and yeah, you, uh, you know, your interest in neuro, um, really to me, cuz I know that as an aspiring psychologist is one of the key kind of things to cover. Um, how did you get into neuro? How did you get into specializing in that?

So I think, well, I, I know I was interested in U I mean during undergraduate, um, uh, during the undergraduate phase of my development, I suppose I, I, I was interested in U I was interested in developmental psychology. You know, there are things that just grab you, don't they, and, and it's sometimes hard to know what it is about that material that's grabbing you. And I'm not sure I've fully worked that out, but I was, I was inspired by the kind of neuro teaching that we, that we had at undergraduate level. So, you know, part of that was just having some brilliant lecturers that, that really were able to convey their enthusiasm for the, for the science. So I started off there. Um, and then I went on to do an assistant post with adults, with learning disability in a, in a sort of rather old and, and now what would be regarded as rather outdated hospital setting.

Um, but there was lots of kind of neuro work in a learning disability setting. And so I was kind of quite keen to translate the neuro stuff that I'd done undergraduate into a, a clinical environment. I went on to do a PhD, looking at development in children with down syndrome, again with a slight neuro emphasis. And I suppose I clung to that all the way through my clinical psychology training. So every placement that I went on, I would kind of carve out a little bit of a neuro niche. So whether it was my older adults or my LD placement on my child placement, I ended up being drawn to the neuro bits. And I suppose, and this, this might be a kind of, a bit of a regret really. I probably neglected some other things I could have spent time doing. I mean, I relied the challenge of all the other aspects of, of what clinical psychology had to offer, but I did find myself pulled towards the comfort of the neuro work that I felt I understood and was naturally, um, you know, so capable of.

Um, so I mean, that's kind of how that's kind of how I specialize, I suppose, very early, but, um, and we might go on to talk about this I'm as someone who's kind of now in a leadership role with regard to neuro specialism, I'm quite interested in people who are late to neuro, you know, people who don't start out thinking they want to take an interest in, but are gradually coaxed into recognizing what it has to offer us as clinical psychologists, whether they're psychologists or not. So I suppose I don't necessarily want to broadcast a message that just like, if you wanna be an international tennis star, you've gotta pick up in racket at four. I, I don't think the same applies in neuro. I don't think you have to enter into clinical psychology thinking you wanna be a neuropsychologist if you want to be successful as a neuropsychologist. I think you can convert late. I think you can qualify as a clinical psychologist and find yourself in a neuro setting and maybe seek to qualify. That's going beyond your question Maryanne, isn't it. But I, I suppose I always like to kind of balance out what I'm saying by, you know, saying that there are other paths that are available. You don't have to pick up a tennis racket of four.

Definitely.

Maybe you do if you want to be an international tennis star. Um, but, but if you want to be interested in neuropsychology, you can leave it a little bit later.

And I think the incredible power of your story is that you stumbled across someone who was really passionate and really good at talking about what they did and got you on board and got you energized and excited about that, which has helped shaped your career. Had you had a really rubbish neuro um, uh, lecturer at uni, you know, you might have come to it later, but you wouldn't have get got all that legwork in there.

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that, you know, I've, we, we talked, uh, just before we started about, I've got, I've got three children, uh, and watched them go through various teachers at various stages and, and you can see, and we've all probably had that experience. So if you get a bad teacher and a particular thing, you, all of a sudden, you think I don't like history, um, but you get a great history teacher and all of a sudden history's the best thing. And you wanna spend the rest of your life studying history. So I think we're incredibly influenced aren't we by inspirational people that we, that we stumble across who convey use for their discipline. Um, so I'm, I'm as much a victim of that as anybody else, but, you know, happily. So,

Yeah, and I think that's partly why I do what I do. I'm so passionate about what I do and I like talking about it and I want others to feel. Honestly, I, I believe hand on heart that I for slash we have the best job in the world. Like it's so varied and it's so lovely to be able to impact on people in such a positive way and with such variety as well.

And that's one of the things that sort of in the, in the, in the conversations that I've had, you know, what's really impressed me is I have a particular, and even within neuro or even within any specialty in, in clinical psychology or applied psychology, there are subspecialties within aren't there. So I'm a pediatric neuropsychologist I'm interested in sort of quite acute diagnostic work, but what's been great about the podcast I've, you know, been involved in as a project is I've had had conversations with people who are doing things which feels so very different to what I do. Um, and it's made me think even within a narrow specialty, like Nero, there's incredible breadth, uh, that I hadn't really recognized in terms of the approaches that people take and the conversations are delightful, you know, because you learn something about other people's passions, you that very distinct from your own, but, but, uh, really comprehensible to us

Every day is a school day. And, you know, we should be learning, we should be stretching ourselves. And, uh, before we started, we were thinking about what we miss, what we have missed out on due to the pandemic, by not having, you know, conversations with new people that we meet. Um, you know, so it might be crossing path, um, in interviews it might be crossing path in, um, you know, in, um, academic settings, it might be crossing path in, um, conferences. And I love talking to random people. I'm the sort of person that will strike up a conversation about cauliflowers, you know, in Asda, I am some people's worst nightmare, but I found that I really missed that during the pandemic because people weren't wanting to talk to strangers and our social kind of norms, smiling and eye contact were often a bit lost and a bit averted because of mask wearing and, you know, socially distancing. So yeah, I love a chat with a stranger

And it's, um, we talked a bit about, you know, how podcasts, how informal conversations like this, whether they're about cauliflowers or whether they're about psych G you know, bring something back in, right. So it it's lovely to have these informal conversations. They don't always feel, I mean, just like talking to a stranger in asked about cauliflowers, doesn't always feel like it's without risk. Um, I don't think podcasting and informality is without risk, but I think if we strip it out and we stick to the, the safe stuff and we stick to the, you know, conventional ways of communicating, uh, we'll find ourselves heavily constrained and that's still continuing isn't it in terms of the opportunities for us to get together face to face, they're still very limited and not everybody feels safe and understandably so. So I think we're gonna have to find ways to have different kinds of conversations, take a few more risks, uh, individually and, and collectively, um, and benefit, I suppose, from that looseness of that, of that kind of interaction.

Mm-hmm yeah, for sure. Um, I'm yeah, it was just yesterday that I was thinking, oh, maybe, um, in person conference might be okay. That feels like that might be alright again now. And we are also talking that there's not so much in the news about the pandemic currently. So we are, we are talking in early March, um, 20, 22, and there's been a shift to other focuses in the news. And so, um, it can be easy to think things aren't still going on, but of course we know that they are in people's life lives are still being affected a great deal by, um, by COVID you'd said just before we started recording that you've had COVID recently as well.

Yeah. And I, I think, um, you know, again, like you say, you learn things sometimes expectedly I'm I, um, I'm part of a long COVID clinic. It's a great clinic. That's obviously been set up and it's a pediatric trick clinic. Um, and it's been a real challenge cuz there's so much we don't know about COVID there's so much we don't know about long COVID and that seems surprising doesn't it given how much data we've had the opportunity to collect, but we've had to do the learning in such a short space of time that there are still massive gaps. Um, and I, I suppose I brought some assumptions around and what COVID was and what long COVID would look like, you know, based on, you know, historical assumptions and biases, I suppose that I did sort of acquired, uh, over a long period of time. Um, but I found myself with a bit of brain fog with a bit of fatigue, uh, with a desire to get back to doing exercise very quickly after sort of beginning to recover from COVID and not all of those things worked for me.

Right. And I took on too much and I found myself flagging towards the end of the day and underperforming and doing all kinds of things that I, gosh, if I, if I hadn't lived through this, I wouldn't really have an understanding of how that can affect a person. Do you see what I mean? I mean, I suppose we've all had coughs and colds, but COVID does feel a little bit different to that, you know, in some ways for me, and it's about my personal experience, it, it did feel like heavy, cold, but there were other symptoms that I had that were entirely novel. I, and I thought this is something different, something we need to work hard to understand. And I think the same applies to, to long COVID, it's a complex heterogeneous, um, constellation to manage in terms of the, the breadth of clinical management.

But I think we need to take seriously, some of the findings, for example, about brain changes following COVID, those are not necessarily devastating changes, but for some people they will have devastating effects, right? So the sort of group effects are concerning. Um, but, but what that hides is for some individuals, these are major life changing, um, events in terms of their cognition, in terms of ability and capacity to get on with their life as it was before. Um, so certainly not to be trivialized. Um, but on the other side, like you say, we're, we're having to make decisions about, do we run a face to face conference? Do we go to a face to face conference? Do we get on a bus? Do we get on a train? Do we take the holiday? Um, we've been talking about this for a while. Haven't we? And I never to talk about COVID or not to talk about COVID, but it feels like such a big thing.

Um, and as you say, there, there are other, there are other things going on in the world right now, the war in Ukraine. Um, you know, uh, and, and like you said, we're talking early March and we don't know where we're gonna be in early April Dewey with regard to those kinds of things. Um, so I think, but we still need to talk about work. We still need to do our work. We still need to kind of focus on on the day job and, and one foot in front of the other, but sometimes it's quite, it's quite difficult to do that. Isn't it? When, when, when such monumental things are happening all around us,

I dunno about you. But, um, the pandemic for the first time ever in my professional life has been a great level, you know, for me being a human for my clients, being a human and at the start of pretty much every session, you know, certainly for the last 18 months, there's been a, well, how are you? You know, how is this? And it's, it's felt a bit more okay to say, yeah, it's tricky. Isn't, it's a bit bit unusual, you know, how are you managing that? Um, and you know, I'm, I've always been a human kind of therapist, but it's very much been about I'm here for you. And for me, it is the first time that there's been more of that reciprocal care. Yeah. Um, and it felt appropriate. It felt, it felt good.

And I think some of those things, we have, uh, uh, a slight discomfort with don't we, so I've had this similar experience, particularly running, uh, appointments on, uh, we use a platform called attend anywhere, but, you know, you know, people will know various platforms are available, uh, that we can use to, to, to, to, to deliver, um, clinical psychology into people's homes. Um, but you know, there are things that we can't avoid. I, you, I've got an exercise break as you know, so behind me, um, people will ask questions about that. I can try my blur backgrounds, but inevitably there's a degree of, um, a sort of a lessoning of the kind of boundaries we of be able to establish in a, in a conventional outpatient setting. And it leads to a looseness of the, of the interaction. And, and in my role in pediatrics, I don't find that particularly compromising indeed.

I found it to be a, an asset. Um, and people do ask me how I'm doing, how, how it's been for me. Um, and I find that quite humbling, really, to kind of, to experience that, that, that shift in terms of, of where people's focus is in those kinds of interactions. But I, I guess we need to be a bit careful that we're also trying to deliver care to people aren't we, we're trying to ensure that we are focused on the needs of our clients rather than our own. And I, and I think you, you know, I found that quite a struggle. So I found out, you know, when I'm having a tough day and I'm still trying to deliver my clinical services, it's not always easy. Um, and thankfully, you know, for most of us, we've got the support of our colleagues, haven't we, to, to check in with them. But when those kinds of support networks have been challenged and rather thin on the ground, it's, um, it's no doubt been challenging for us, hasn't it, to, to continue to do what we do.

Absolutely. I think what we're, what we're alluding to here is the issue of containment. And actually that's a re incredibly important issue for us as qualified psychologists, but also as unqualified psychologists as well, and aspiring psychologists. Yeah. Have you got any top tips for helping feel more contained in, in careers generally, especially for when you are an aspiring psychologist, what do you find helpful when you are perhaps supervising assistance or junior members?

That's a, that's a, that's a really challenging question, Marianne, I suppose, you know, I, I suppose one of the things that I find is that I probably really make all the mistakes that everybody makes right around containment. Uh, I run a very busy service, whether it's psychological health services or neuropsychology, uh, we run a course in Bristol where people with aspirations are trying to make progress with their research projects, with their learning. And, um, and the balance has sort of slightly been lost or at least is being challenged. And I'm not sure I have all the answers in terms of how we find that. I mean, I find myself scrolling through Twitter sort of news and following politics and stories of war and COVID and those kinds of other things, and find myself drawn into cycles that I don't think are particularly healthy in terms of those, those conversations.

I'm also watching, as I'm sure you are given the focus of your, um, interests, watching assistant psychologist, applying for doctorates in clinical psychology. Um, what I found quite helpful. And I mentioned to you, we, we ran a, a podcast with, um, a group of assistant psychologists about working in neuro. What I thought was great is they had lots of ideas about solutions. So when they got together and talked about their experiences and where they're at in their career pathway, they had lots of advice for each other about how they could contextualize the challenges they're experiencing in a way that was really helpful. So one of the, one of the best things I heard, actually, there were lots of great things that I heard last week, but, um, one of the best things I heard is your career. Doesn't start when you successfully get onto a, a doctorate in clinical psychology.

I mean, I've talked about how my interest in neuropsychology started when I was an undergraduate, maybe even started a bit before, but it's hard to track back further, but everything that I did, particularly the things I did early on have been incredible foundations for what I've done subsequently. And I'm so pleased that I didn't rush process. I didn't feel that I rushed, um, into clinical psychology. And I think a lot of the concern, I suppose, people have about how competitive it is, and it is of course, competitive, um, tends to amplify a desire to, to kind of rush the process, to, to apply early, to, to do, to do trial applications and things like that. And I'm not saying those things aren't valuable and, and they may well be the best route for some individuals, but I also think there's a need for balance in terms of enjoying what you're doing right now and learning for learning sake, um, and really drinking in the experiences that you're having, whether it's an assistant, a volunteer, a healthcare as system, you know, whoever, you know, supportive member of your family or social network, you know, I think those are all opportunities for us to learn things that will stand us in good stead going forward,

They really are. And I love the idea of, of actually it doesn't start on day one of training. And, um, it reminds me of the fact that I've been a home carer and a lot of the things I've learned about dignity, compassion, and respect have come from that, that relationship that I've had with all of those clients. And it was so humbling and so precious and special to me that I carry that in every, every interaction I do as a clinical psychologist. And there's so much value in these and seemingly perhaps even non psychology related professions that that can teach us so much.

Yes. And I, I find, I mean, I suppose, as I said earlier, we don't, we don't stop being challenged by those kinds of when we're qualified or when we're on a training course, we, we still focus sometimes on end goals rather than processes. So, um, you know, in training in specialist training in neuropsychology, you know, I find myself often talking about the vibe and the portfolio that people have to produce. So the end product, if you see what I mean, um, and actually what, we've, what we're, what we are now pushing to try and do is have many more conversations about how can you get the maximum value in terms of learning from, from everyday experiences. Like you say, every day's a school day. Um, even if it's a Saturday still a school day, right? We can still learn stuff outside of formal education. Um, we might, might not always pay attention to what we learn from supervision if we're just clocking the hours, you know, so in neuropsychology, we've had this convention of counting the hours of supervision.

You have a bit like you might do, if you need a hundred hours of flying experience to fly a plane. But actually what really matters is you can take off and land safely and you can cope with bad weather and you can do all of those, but they wouldn't all be part of the exam. Right. So being a good pilot isn't necessarily about getting your pilot's license, although it's in part about that, it's also about what did you learn from the challenges you experienced in bad weather, tricky crosswinds and all of this kind of stuff. And I, I just think we need to maybe refocus our attention a little bit in terms of that educational developmental process. And these are subtle tweaks, aren't they? Right? But it's not only about, uh, encouraging students to think about, or, or people who are in a, in a learning environment to think about things in that way. It's also about our responsibilities as leaders line managers, supervisors, and teachers to, to, to, to shift our focus of attention on what it is that we're learning, what competencies we we're trying to develop.

I love that idea of bad weather and that so applies in psychology as well. Doesn't it, you know, the bad weather might look like a non attuned supervision relationship. It might look like that time. You said something awful, or let a safeguarding concern, you know, not register as it should have done. It can look like so many different things, but it is the learning we take from that, so that it shapes our future decisions, you know, so that we don't let that safeguarding concern slip next time so that we are just a bit more hot on it. And we are more comfortable with talking about those things with clients, um, and reflect and reflecting in action, reflecting on action, all those other good things. And like you said, you know, we can learn about people's experience from hearing them talk about it, but, you know, like you said, with the COVID situation, it doesn't, you don't have to be hit by a bus to know it hurts, but it sure does help help doesn't it? It does help.

Yeah. I think it gives you insights into, I mean, I, I suppose, I suppose what I would want to balance that out with a bit, like when I was talking about how I got into neuro, I'm also aware that not everybody's experiences like mine, whether it's having COVID, whether it's their journey into clinical psychology and beyond into, into a, a subspecialty beyond that. Um, and, and that's why having these conversations is great, cuz you can kind of learn from other people about the journey that they've taken. And I think we probably have too few conversations about those things. Um, another great thing I heard last week in, in supervision was about talking to assistants about what good supervision supportive supervision looks like. Um, and there's always something we can learn. Isn't there from hearing about other people's, how other people have benefited from supervising relationships that are different from the ones that we set up and deliver and are part of.

And, and I I've really enjoyed kind of hearing about how I might be able to shape up the kind of super supervis relationships that I have into something that could maybe be more helpful, um, to assistance. One of the things I wanted to say, and it's sort of come up naturally for me as a, as a thought is, and particularly, maybe in neuro that I've always experienced to someone who employs assistant psychologist, for example, a bit of attention in, in between what the organization needs, right? So it needs someone to fulfill a role to do a job and do a good job and then there's think, and, and I see those things as balanced against what the individual needs and one of the struggles is, well, how do you kind of achieve a balance, which is all, both for the organization and the service and for that individual's learning. And of course the retentions that arise, but one of the constant challenges is trying to resolve those tensions so that the, both the system gets what it needs and that individual in that, in that role gets, gets what they need in terms of the support.

It's, you probably spent quite a bit of time talking about that Maryanne, do you with, with people on your podcast and in your wider circle?

Um, yeah, it's certainly, um, yeah, different, different functions for people's existence, isn't it? That can be hard to juggle and it's not, you know, I say to my kids very nice, but you're not the king of the world, you know? Yeah. yeah. Um, the world doesn't revolve around you and sometimes you need to do things just because you've been asked to do them and um, you know, even if it's not something that's gonna look great on your CV, if it's within reasonable limits and it is on your job description, um, you know, you may just need to, to do it

Harsh lessons in your household Maryanne.

Oh you, because they're only eight and five . Yeah.

One, one of the, um, I, the, and I'm, I'm not trying to subvert your, your plan in terms of where you thought this conversation might go, but the other thing that's come up for me comes up for me quite a lot in terms of interviewing people with regard to that kind of tension and who, who is this role for? Right. Um, and what is this role for is that, um, often when I ask people, what, what, what interests them about the role? We sometimes hear an awful lot about how it will benefit the individual applicant, if that makes sense and correspondingly little about how they can bring something which really benefits the service, if that makes sense. So it's a, it requires a, a, quite a, a fundamental mindset shift. And I know that when I was applying for assistant jobs and PhDs and things like that, it was a all about what the role brought to me very much so.

And I really struggled to kind of think about what, what, what are the people on the other side of the table in this conventional interview want, want to hear from me? And that it, it just hadn't, it hadn't dawned upon me to even think about what they were expecting. And one of the great things about clinical psychology training, particularly when I did it, is that fundamentally I experienced a revolution in actually being able to think about people on the other side of the table simultaneously with also considering what I was thinking, what I needed. So the kind of metacognitive dawning really, which was the entire clinical psychology training experience for me. And I, I think probably made

Relationships are a two way street.

But if we're always thinking about, you know, if I'm having this conversation with you and I'm thinking about what I need, it's not gonna be a very satisfactory conversation, is it? I think, I think, you know, often Murphy when we are interviewed or we're challenged or when we faced with a particular career aspiration and we see this process as being something we need to win at, you know what I mean? We've become slightly narrowly focused, don't we on a certain way of interacting that probably isn't optimal.

Yeah. It's part of that listening to hear, rather than listening to respond as well. Isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. I, and, and, you know, doing a podcast a bit nervewracking, isn't it, we really tend to narrowly focus a, a, a little bit. I should be asking you what you want to do. If there's, if there's anything you were hoping for from me today that you haven't heard me talk about,

You're doing a great job.

I'm doing a good job, thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I know a question that I get asked reasonably often from aspiring psychologists is, well, how can I build neuro experience? I'm not getting, you know, I'm not getting shortlisted for neuro posts. I can't get my hands on, you know, neuropsych tests at worth thousands of pounds to, you know, to, to sample on my partners or my family. Yeah.

Is there, wouldn't recommend doing that in any case very on, but, um,

Is there anything people can do to bolster their skills and experience to, you know, without actually necessarily being employed within a neuro service?

I, I, I think, I think there's, there's probably a shift and it's not just a shift that we've experienced in Bristol, but there's probably a, a if nationally, um, that we're witnessing in terms of how say assistant psychologists get recruited. And my hope is that the similar shifts are going on in clinical psychology, that we aren't asking people to demonstrate that they already know all the things that they're gonna be expected to do. Um, and I, I, I, I, I'm equally enthusiastic as an, as an employer, as a, as a clinical psychologist working in the NHS to a, to employ people. Who've got enthusiasm, an interest in what it is that we do rather than, you know, a track record of doing this for the last two or three years, because P people who already know how to do it have less to benefit from the role and in thinking about what they need.

I think what we need to do is to give novel experiences to people who are thirsty for those experiences and those, those individuals make the best assistant psychologists we've employed. They're not necessarily people who are interested in neuro, right, but they're interested in learning something about a particular specialty in clinical psychology. And it's great to witness that learning happening. It's really, um, inspiring for us, um, as clinical psychologists in that service. Um, and it benefits those individuals far more than learning more of the same, if that makes sense. So again, it's something that came up in the conversation I had last week with the assistance. Um, , there's incredible breadth in neuro. You don't have to be doing tests. You don't have to attested your partner or your grandmother or whatever else you might think you need to do. What I think you need to do is have enthusiasm for the work that goes on.

And the work is often, far broader than you'd expect, right? So I I'm sure have probably had this experience of if you are talking to someone about, and, and you ask them what they think you might be interested in. It's often a, quite a narrow, uh, representation of what they've managed to find out from a website, but your interests are far broader than perhaps, you know, somebody might recognize from, from, from what they can learn about you. So, I mean, similarly when I'm talking to people, um, and they're only interested in the brain, I think, well, you need to kind of be interested in the person as well as the person's brain. Um, that's really important cuz the bulk of what we do is working with people. Um, and it's about being a, a practitioner psychologist about being a health psychologist, a forensic psychologist, a a clinical psychologist, a counselor, as much as it is being a, a neuropsychologist.

And one of the great things about the conversations I've had with colleagues in neuropsychology is we feel the same. We, we, we don't spend our lives with our, our, our heads in test manuals and, and moving blocks around on the tech. We just spend a bit of time doing that. It's quite good, fun. Right. And it's a great thing about neuropsychology that we've got that in our armory, but it's not what neuropsychology is. Um, and we don't, we don't expect people to mold themselves on that, that kind of vision. It's such a broad, a broad church.

I love the idea of actually, yeah, it's the person you want to recruit rather than necessarily the skills and this, perhaps some of the value of some with the clinical psychology tests for logical reasoning and you know, um, how they think around different problems. You want someone who's really good at problem solving and really enthusiastic and you know, wants to do this and wants to do this well and wants to learn. Uh, and as I was listening to your speaker, I was remembering, trying to remember which order people had tapped blocks in and it was making me feel like, oh no, I can't do it. I got it wrong. Which one did they touch first? Which one did they last touch? Do you, do you record stuff now these days? Has it moved on or is it all just memory and trying to,

No, we still, we, we, we, we still do that. It's that that test you describe is called Coursey blocks. It's a visual spatial working memory task. Um, one of the challenges of doing that is that you have to have the working memory skills to be able to, I think this is what you're saying to remember what the person has, has done. Um, and similarly we have a, a kind of sequential, um, learning task we do with children where you knock, tap and move your hands in various ways. And then you watch whether the child can replicate that it's hard enough to do the dance, let alone mark somebody else's dancing in response to yours. So I think some of those things are, are quite esoteric and, and, and good fun to learn. But it's interesting. You mentioned the reasoning tasks. Cause I think we, of course, we're interested in people's problem solving, but I do worry a little bit.

You must have seen this stuff of, of, of how people feel about doing those reasoning tasks and, and, and, uh, uh, um, that are part of a, an application process. So I think, I think we do need to think about what we ask people to do, how we ask people to perform, to demonstrate they've got the, the requisite, uh, foundation to be able to perform within the role. Um, we did the great exercise recently, um, around the, we've got some new trust values and we asked, um, individuals who apply for a post to pick one of the values and talk about how it was important to them. Mm-hmm and it was the best interview material that I'd ever come across, you know, in terms of everybody who contributed to that process, excelled at doing this. And they all excelled in different ways. And I would've had no hesitation in playing any of those people. Um, but it re was really, was a very different interview process if you like to anyone that we'd undertaken before. Um, so I happily, um, substitute that for a, for a reasoning task because, um, because we were able to see the excellence of the candidates that we had in front of us. And I think nothing has matched that, that we've done in the past. Yeah.

And it allows 'em to be individuals as well, doesn't it? So they might have been six to 10 plus values and they're able to pick the one that resonates with them. And that's powerful seen some of these reasoning questions. I don't know if I'd have got through, you know, and I learned really good clinical psychologists, but certainly the ones I saw, I was like, say what now? Um, so yeah, your, your style of interview would absolutely have suited me better. I'm just conscious of the time. And let me just think about your incredible podcast. Could you tell us a little bit about, about what it's called and how it got started and, um, you know, what it involves?

So I run a podcast called the neuro clinic, um, and the sort of schedule slightly sporadic, but we've probably run about one of them a month. Uh it's it's something that started as we talked about with regard to COVID and the restrictions that we had on our, on, on our, on the conversations we could have about cauliflowers and other things. And I thought, wouldn't it be great to have some of those conversations? And so in a sort of rather selfish way, it was just a nice way for me to have a conversation and, and hopefully not ruin it by clicking on record. Um, so it's just been lovely to have conversations with other neuropsychologists, um, that I would otherwise bump into at conferences. Um, but what's sort of taken things in a slightly different turn, which is where, you know, we've stumbled across each other is thinking about the people who are interested.

This are also aspiring clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists asking the kind of questions you are asking about. What if I was interested in neuropsychology? What, what should I do? Um, how might I think about the work of a neuropsychologist? Um, had some great conversations with people about being interested in neuro during their clinical training and where neuro, uh, on road, psychological skills fit in terms of our broader formulation skills. Um, we spent a lot of time talking about how there's a, a separateness around neuro and clinical, if you like. And what we need to do is to think about those being fundamentally things that we need to more effectively integrate, um, and what, what I've learned. I used to do some teaching and I'd say, who's interested in neuro hands up, uh, and you'd get, and you basically split the room. So a third of the people, half of the people would put their hands up and the other half people would fold their arms and tell you how they were quite fearful of neuro and they were not that interested in it. Um, but it's a ludicrous question to ask that creates this kind of B binary distinction between those who are interested and not interested, and doesn't really address the subtlety. Um, that's important to us about what we're interested in. And I think where I started with this conversation was just thinking about, you know, I thought I was interested in Europe, but I've discovered, and I've, I realized that I'm interested in everything. You know, there's so much to learn. Isn't there so much to learning clinical psychology

And you're interested in humans

Interested in humans, interested in the humans outside of their brains and within their brains. Um, I'm trying to maintain that balance is, is what's really important. And I think those conversations that I've been having have helped to sort of make that real, to sort of help me to understand how people achieve that balance in lots of different ways.

Mm-hmm, lovely if people want to connect with you, um, Ingram, how can they do that? Where's the best place for them to get in contact with you?

So I'm on Twitter a little bit too much. So I think I'm, uh, clinical neuro on Twitter and I, and the, a podcast is called a neuro clinic. So I'd invite people to, to take a listen and I'll be taking a listen to you, Marianne in, in return.

Good. Likewise, thank you so much for your time today. You've been incredibly inspiring and compassionate and thoughtful. Um, and I know people will find this really useful and I do still feel a little bit in awe of you, so thank you,

Marianne. Thank you. Likewise.

(39:42): If you are following me on my socials, you will be able to see all of my content together, which includes a link to the podcast. It includes replays as a playlist of the compassionate Q and a, a series, and also the DEC site application series videos too. Um, and there is also details on there about how you can write for the next aspiring psychologist collective book, which is very exciting. That is going to be coming out in autumn in October. So there is still time to get involved if you'd like to be considered for writing your story for the aspiring psychologist. Collective do check that out. There's also a link on that link tree site, um, for details of the aspiring psychologist membership. So the extended phase of the membership is going to be the opening again on, on Friday, the 29th of April at 8:00 AM, but only if you are on the waiting list.