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      Counselling Patients with a Spinal Cord Injury

      Sliedrecht, Susan
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      Sliedrecht, S. (2007). Counselling Patients with a Spinal Cord Injury (Thesis, Master of Counselling (MCouns)). The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/2426
      Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/2426
      Abstract
      The aim of this study was to improve current counselling services at the Auckland

      Spinal Unit. This purpose was achieved by co-researching the topic with people

      who have extensive experience of living in the community with a spinal cord injury

      to reveal what they believe was helpful, or believe would have been helpful, in

      terms of the counselling, when they were newly injured.

      Listening to the stories of the research participants, through supervision of my own

      practice, doing a literature review and writing a journal became sources that

      provided rich knowledges to reflect on my current counselling practice.

      A qualitative study was conducted using aspects of action research, feminist

      research and post-structuralist methods.

      In November 2005, an information pack was mailed to the sixteen patients who had

      been discharged from the Auckland Spinal Unit between June 2002 and June 2004,

      who were under the age of sixty -five and lived in the Auckland area, inviting them

      to participate in this research. Seven people agreed and were available to

      participate.

      I interviewed these seven participants, using unstructured interviews. All the

      interviews were audio-taped and then transcribed verbatim. These verbatim

      transcripts were then sent back to the participants for any

      additions/deletions/alterations they chose to make.

      To initiate the reflecting process, I then went through all the interviews and

      identified common themes. I understand that if the research participants had been

      involved in this process, other themes might have emerged for them.

      The themes identified were loss and grief as a result of a spinal cord injury,

      sexuality, family (whanau) involvement and how counselling services should be

      positioned in a setting such as the Auckland Spinal Unit. These themes formed the

      iii

      foci of the chapters, with an additional chapter on weaving cultural threads into

      counselling.

      The main findings of the study centre on the very important role of counselling at

      the Auckland Spinal Unit. In particular, the study highlighted the importance of

      counselling as a place for conversations that make room for multiple positionings

      and multiple versions of events, a space that respects a patient's hopes, beliefs and

      dreams for his/her life (which often does not include wheelchairs, catheters and

      caregivers) but that also supports the patient to make meaning of living life with a

      spinal cord injury.

      The study also identified the importance of sexuality counselling. Not including

      sexuality as a topic in the rehabilitation services provided perpetuates dominant

      discourses that a person with a spinal cord injury does not want sexual intimacy or

      cannot be sexually intimate and cannot have children.

      Family (whanau) involvement in and family's becoming part of the rehabilitation

      team was very important to most participants. This study looks at how this

      involvement can be achieved and explores some of the structures currently in place

      at the Auckland Spinal Unit to facilitate this involvement. Participants in this study

      expressed a desire for counselling to be highly accessible to both themselves and

      their families (whanau). They would prefer the counsellors to get to know the

      patients in their own environment first (in their rooms), so that the patients are

      positioned to have agency to make choices about how they would like to use the

      available counselling services.

      The study concludes with my personal journey of working as a counsellor at the

      Auckland Spinal Unit and how this research has shaped and fine-tuned my practice.
      Date
      2007
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Name
      Master of Counselling (MCouns)
      Publisher
      The University of Waikato
      Rights
      All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
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      • Masters Degree Theses [2385]
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