Walls and Bridges: Bodmin to Broadmoor: A Journey Working in Mental Health

by Paul Deacon

Ward 25 was an acute admission ward

Carstairs High Secure Hospital in Scotland

Did not know about that

I always found student nurses’ experiences very interesting and started to get a picture of how a High Secure Hospital like this would operate.

I too am curious

Cornish pasty.

My favourite

I can remember quite clearly being on night duty and thinking about some of my colleagues who had left St Lawrence’s and gone off to work at Broadmoor Hospital.

Pretty sure I work with one of those people

within the forensic setting

What I want to work within one day

Just like the patients we lived, ate and slept there, so it wasn’t being much different being nursing staff.

Interesting

Taunton Ward

Peter Sutclife was a patient on that ward

Once stabilised they would be transferred back to prison.

Or if

the role concerning the maintenance of security, and the second was that concerning assessing and caring for the dangerous individual.

all the cutlery was signed in and out.

Such a fun job

Knowing the patient meant that you could pinpoint their triggers and calm and reassure them.

So important

this was a one week course which taught the skills needed to defend yourself, and how to restrain a patient if they became violent.

MAV - Management of Aggresion and Violence

On this day, the visiting duty was slightly different and I was taken back when Gary Kemp (from Spandau Ballet) was escorted in to the central hall to meet Ronnie Kray for the first time.

WTF

Even today, television crews continue to make further documentaries about the hospital.

Today (28/10/2024) episode two of 'Broadmoor' will air on Channel5 at 9pm

drones have been delivering illicit drugs to prisons and secure units.)

Interesting

He managed to scale the 18 foot wall by climbing the CCTV mast pole which had been installed too close to the wall.

Fucking hell

It can be heard all over Crowthorne, Camberley, Wokingham, Bagshot, Bracknell, and Sandhurst.

Diana, Princess of Wales, visited Broadmoor on two occasions, and I was privileged to meet her. She arrived at Broadmoor Hospital on 14 November 1995, as the patron of the British mental health charity Turning Point. On this day she opened the therapy unit, and a centre for research into psychiatric disorders linked with violence.

We love Diana

multi-disciplinary meeting,

MDT

There were times at Broadmoor when things became quite stressful. Some days there were incidents after incidents.

Like that in lower security hospitals too

Everyone’s fear was of being taken hostage. A memory of the seclusion room door being closed on me and the patient still in seclusion even now leaves me and others feeling cold.

Oh god that sounds terrifying

including one-to-one or group supervision.

So important

Jo Brand the comedian. It wasn’t until I asked and discovered that she was a comedian and had in the past worked in mental health as a ward manager.

Teresa ‘Treza’ Hartley and I had started out as nursing assistants at St Lawrence’s around the same time in the 70s. Although I didn’t know Treza that well whilst working at St Lawrence’s, our paths crossed many times in our vocational routes, and social gatherings. Treza began working at Broadmoor a year before me. We would often meet up and reminisce about the past. One day on our breaks, we continued a discussion that we had started months earlier about organising a big reunion with the staff of St Lawrence’s and Broadmoor.

I actually work with Teresa sometimes and she is phenomenal

our colleagues who had left St Lawrence’s had gone on to manage a unit in Bristol; he also became the medical advisor for the BBC series Casualty. I had replaced him on Kenwyn Ward as a nursing assistant; he went off to commence his nurse training. He managed to bring loads of different items to the evening that had been signed by the actors in the series – even a plaster cast! We raffled all of these items and the money went to a mental health charity.

His worst fears were confirmed on the 30th December 1999, when he was attacked in his own home by an intruder. The attacker, who was from Liverpool, believed he was possessed by Harrison and was on a mission from God to kill him. He was acquitted of attempted murder on the grounds of insanity and detained and sent for treatment at Ashworth High Secure Hospital, Broadmoor’s sister hospital in Liverpool. On the 29th November 2001 George Harrison died of throat cancer.

‘Well what kind of person did you think worked there?’ You always knew that it would be the stereotype full on rugby player come bouncer image in some people’s heads. Working at Broadmoor is all about the skills that you had learnt and used in practice. You were trained to listen and if a nurse really listens, then the patient would feel safe to open up. If they are listened to without criticism or judgement their confidence and self-esteem will grow. When you are patient with yourself you can be patient with others.

‘What Paul, the working class boy from the streets of nowhere had secured a place at a university to train as a nurse?’ I Left Broadmoor Hospital on 31st August 1997 to commence my student nurse training at the University of Plymouth.

I found myself working on my first placement on an acute admission ward at St Lawrence’s Hospital.

Here are a few words of advice that I offer from my experience as a student nurse on my first placement:

Make note for when I hopefully become a student nurse!

My efforts were finally rewarded by obtaining my RMN (Registered Mental Nurse) registration in September 2000.

I wasted no time in applying for a staff nurse post on Loveny Ward (St Lawrence’s Hospital) a psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Dear Sir Richard Branson, Re – Nursing, Mentorship, Leadership, Vision. At the youthful age of 40 I commenced my training to become a Registered Nurse in Mental Health.

‘Excellent Psychiatric Intensive Care’ and that our PICU was the first of its kind in the South West