As a healthcare professional, you will work with a variety of cultural groups, patient populations, and varying psychological diagnoses. The intersectionality of these issues and how they affect different people groups is coming further into popular understanding with time, so being aware of these different factors is more important than ever.
Therefore, taking advantage of mental and behavioral health courses to improve your knowledge and skills will increase your success when working with different groups of people. The PCC Institute for Health Professionals offers five mental and behavioral health courses that can improve your competency as a healthcare professional.
1. Cultural Competency and Ethics for Health Professionals
Cultural competence in healthcare is vital for ensuring each and every patient receives the best care possible. This course teaches essential cultural competency tools for healthcare professionals and is taught by two longtime leaders in cultural competence within the field.
Benefits of Cultural Competency Courses for Healthcare Professionals
A course such as Cultural Competency and Ethics for Health Professionals bridges the gap in cross-cultural situations and teaches healthcare professionals what it takes to provide high-quality, patient-centered care that reduces the disparity in healthcare and increases health literacy in patients and healthcare workers.
Cultural competence and ethics training provides a healthcare worker with the skills needed to properly assess each situation and adjust his or her behaviors in order to meet the needs of patients in other cultures, socioeconomic groups, and from different belief systems “while maintaining a professional level of respect, objectivity, and identity.”
The ethics part of the training allows many health professionals (who must complete 6 hours of ethics training for license renewal) to meet their ethics CE requirement. Effectively, this course weaves cultural competency under the "ethics" umbrella, letting participants learn something new while meeting their CEU requirements.
Cultural competency training has resulted in more successful patient education, encouraged healthcare-seeking behavior by different patient groups, resulted in fewer diagnostic errors, and ensures greater adherence to medical advice.
2. Methods for Sexual Health Conversations in Drug and Alcohol Treatment
This online course is designed for those who work in the healthcare and counseling fields who regularly treat people coping with drug and alcohol abuse who want to learn more about how addressing sexual health can contribute to maintaining sobriety. The core treatment areas that are addressed include sex/drug-linked sexual health, sexual attitudes and values, and sexual health.
Benefits of Learning About Methods for Sexual Health Conversations in Drug and Alcohol Treatment
Studies have shown that when sex education is a part of a drug and alcohol abuser’s treatment, relapse is lower and completion of treatment is higher than in those patients who do not receive sex education. Through the Methods for Sexual Health Conversations in Drug and Alcohol Treatment course, you will learn how to become more comfortable with talking about sex, sexuality, and sexual health as an important aspect of working with clients in recovery and initiating interventions related to sexual health.
This course is based on the work of Doug Braun-Harvey, and is taught by one of his students. You will also be encouraged to explore any judgmental thoughts and statements that might interfere with sexual health conversations and assess any thoughts and feelings you might have about commonly-held sexual attitudes.
3. Mental Health and Wellbeing: Impacts of Digestion
There is a strong connection between healthy digestion and mental and physical wellbeing. Science increasingly demonstrates how mental health suffers when the digestive system, or “gut” is compromised. Inversely, research also indicates that mental health issues and stress can trigger flares in people living with digestive conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
This course will focus on the Enteric Nervous System or the “Gut-Brain Axis.” It is a one-day six-hour classroom course co-taught by a licensed counselor and a Certified Holistic Nutritionist.
Benefits of the Impacts of Digestion Course
The course will provide you with the knowledge and skills needed to guide clients through the holistic process to wellbeing by integrating multisensory input through somatic and cognitive exercises, and imprinting the internal conversation to reinforce positive change. You will learn about the Enteric Nervous System and the important relationship between nutritional wellness and physical, mental, and behavioral health.
4. Awareness-Based Mindfulness
The PCC Institute for Health Professionals is offering a mindfulness course: Awareness-Based Mindfulness: Clinical Application for Anxiety and Depression. These courses teach you the skills needed to assist with shifting your clients’ anxiety and depression using various practical and creative methods.
Benefits of Awareness-Based Mindfulness
Clinical evidence has shown that the use of Positive Psychology from a strengths-based approach can effectively manage moods and enhance life-success and experience. These courses will teach methods using evidence-based techniques that show how blending mindfulness and neuroscience can unlock hidden strengths and the power of intentionality. Using solution-based interventions, you can help your clients rewire their brains and more effectively regulate their emotions and manage daily stress.
5. Foundations of Motivational Interviewing
We are offering two Motivational Interviewing (MI) courses, one foundational and one that is at the intermediate level. These courses teach skills for using Motivational Interviewing, which is a method that helps to affect positive changes in your clients’ and patients’ behaviors. Techniques will be taught to help you facilitate and engage intrinsic motivation within a client to elicit behavior change and resolve internal conflicts. Each course consists of an 8-hour class.
Benefits of Motivational Interviewing
The Foundations of Motivational Interviewing course will teach the methods and principles of Motivational Interviewing to help you facilitate changes in the behaviors of your clients. These skills can be integrated into your established practice and will enhance interviewing techniques you currently use on a daily basis. Some of the new techniques will include the use of open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries.
Motivational Interviewing, Intermediate, is a practice-based training class designed for professionals in any setting who are working with people to change behavior. Participants will learn further applications of Motivational Interviewing (MI) as an approach to facilitating change. Particular focus includes: The 4 processes of MI, preparatory change talk, gauging readiness to change, transitioning to planning, and supporting change.
Each of these mental and behavioral health courses for healthcare professionals offers additional knowledge, skills, and techniques that are essential when working with those from different cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and belief systems, as well as for those working with patients and clients suffering from anxiety, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse.
