Kit McGowan

I’m a staff nurse at a respite service for adults who have a diagnosed learning disability and display behaviours what can challenge services. I help the individuals that use this service to continue their daily routines and participate in meaningful activity to help build relationships and skills. As part of my role, I’m responsible for a number of patients as their primary nurse and write care plans, liaise with family and participate in MDT working with clinicians. The team is primarily made up of learning disability and mental health nurses, along side health care support workers. We specialise in de-escalation work and implementing PBS plans to help reduce the use of restrictive interventions and reduce the use of restrictive interventions and reduce episodes of challenging behaviour.

As a learning disability nurse working with individuals who can have difficulty articulating their wants and wishes, it is crucial that I advocate for them in all situations. Increasing my leadership skills will help me do this more effectively. Theses skills will also help me progress in my career and help develop the service as a whole. Challenging behaviour is a sector of LD nursing which I feel very strongly about and I’m passionate about improving my practice as much as possible to provide the best care and innovate in this space. The opportunity to collaborate with other individuals to discover new ways of working, or share current ones of my own to help develop my own skills or knowledge is something that I will hugely benefit from.