Face Negotiation

Counselor Interview

Ursuline Bankhead is a doctoral student in the field of Counseling Psychology. She is currently working in the Veterans Administration Hospital doing a rotation in the Geriatric division. She works forty hours a week and it is a paid internship. She prefers to work with clientele ranging from adolescents to geriatrics.

How does she like the profession so far? At her present internship, it’s challenging but it’s great and it’s needed with the population getting older. I asked her how she works with patients who have dementia and she told me that she first tests them to look at their level of functioning There’s a series of mental status tests that she gives them to see where their memory is and what they can and cannot do and also administers mental status tests. She does counseling with some of them and their families about changes that are happening for them and how they can adjust to them and she works with caregivers on how to adjust emotionally and practically to the changes that are happening to the patient with dementia. These patients are outpatients so they come in to see her or they are a part of the Adult Day Care at the hospital. She does see some patients who are inpatients that are getting rehabilitation after a stroke or may be having other difficulties. She sees a variety of people for a variety of reasons.

In answer to my question about how she communicates with a patient who has a stroke, she told me that she communicates with a patient with a stroke and it depends on the severity. If severe, she has them communicate with an eye blink for yes or two blinks for no. She has to be creative in communicating. She has some clients who have tracheotomy tubes in which there is no larynx so she uses mechanical devices or whatever she can do to help them communicate with her.

As far as education is concerned, of course an undergraduate degree is needed so that you can understand the basic fundamentals of psychology.

Then you will need at least 5 years of graduate school and dissertations must be done to receive your doctorate degree. The whole time you are in school you are seeing clients in a variety of settings such as counseling centers, community agencies and hospitals. She worked at the Holding Center for a year and a correctional facility as well. Along with coursework, you work 15-20 hours of time a week working with clients. Your last year, 5th year, which is the year she is working in, involves a year working full-time at a site and you have to compete to get it. It’s not guaranteed.

I asked her if after she receives her Ph.D. whether she will move to another state. She plans to practice her profession here in Buffalo because she’s married and she has a 7 year old child.

I asked her why she chose the counseling profession and her response was when she was 22 years old, she was living in Oregon and she needed a job very badly and randomly got a job working with teen mothers who were involved in gangs and she really loved it. She just loves working with people and interacting with them and seeing how people change and realizing that to help people who want to change you have to be creative and flexible. It’s challenging and if you’re good at psychology, you are always challenging yourself so that you can help each individual or each family. She challenges herself by looking at assumptions and biases she may have. She realizes that if she is working with a patient or a client and she is bored, then she is probably also boring the crap out of the client too so she understands that she needs to do something different so instead of just doing talk therapy she may use art or music or teach them relaxation or anything that will work so that they can be expressive. The counselor must go beyond just saying to them things like “How are you feeling”? Sometimes you have to ask them hard questions such as: asking an 80 year old man if they are having sex and if not, what is it like for him to not be able to have sex. She had to learn to get over being shy. Ursuline told me, “If you’re going to be a good therapist you are going to be challenged”. In the geriatric rotation she’s in, she has to deal with issues of death and dying and not only looking at her beliefs but her patients’ beliefs about death and what it means. It’s challenging for her. She’s constantly growing because if she stops then she feels she’s not going to be any good to her clientele at all. She loves the challenges and would not think of ever changing her profession.

Most of her patients Ursuline works with are about 75 years of age and older and she works mainly with patients who have dementia and enjoys it immensely. She also does evaluations for Transplant Services in the kidney and liver division and capacity hearings