Acute, Intensive, & Residential Services SIG Update

Acute, Intensive, & Residential Services SIG Update

By Alysha Thompson, PhD
AIRS Special Interest Group Chair

It’s been a busy few months for the AIRS SIG! We’ve hosted two coffee hours, topics including Navigating Virtual Care for Adolescents and a Panel on Postdoctoral Fellowships in Acute, Intensive, and Residential Services. We also have created an awards committee and are planning for our first AIRS awards, to be awarded this August at APA. Given this new committee, we created a new position on our executive board, the Awards Committee Co-Chair, and we welcomed Dr. Kimberly Schubert into that role. In addition, we re-elected our Trainee Member at Large, and Patricia Garibaldi will serve a second term on the AIRS SIG Executive Board.

We had a great presence at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Convention, with lots of excellent presentations and attendance by AIRS SIG members. Highlights included multiple presentations from folks at Bradley Hospital/Brown University and Boston University regarding positive psychology interventions on inpatient units!

We also have an active listserv discussion with topics including dress code on inpatient units, social work on inpatient units, psych-safe furniture recommendations, acuity tools to measure patient acuity, programming for high acuity units, one to one staffing policies, physical interactions and boundaries on inpatient units, and problematic sexual behaviors. Our listserv continues to be a great way for AIRS SIG members to connect with one another to discuss topics that are relevant to AIRS and hear how other institutions are managing ongoing challenges in these settings.

We are continuing to expand our membership, and know that there are still psychologists working in Acute, Intensive, and Residential settings that could benefit from the AIRS SIG community and don’t know about us yet! If you know a psychologist who works in inpatient psychiatry, emergency department mental health, partial hospital programs, intensive outpatient programs, or residential treatment, please let them know about the AIRS SIG! Our mission has been to connect psychologists around the country who work in these settings, knowing that we are often the only psychology representation in our smaller units, and we can do that with your help to spread the word. We also want to remind AIRS SIG members to take our membership survey, found here.

Our early career consultation group continues to meet monthly. If you identify as an early career psychologist working in AIRS settings, please come and join our group for community and consultation! More information regarding dates can be found in our flier, which is included in this article.

Lastly, we have a few things upcoming. Dr. Leyla Erguder will be presenting in an upcoming coffee hour “Microaggressions in Acute Care Settings: Implications for Clinical Practice and Workplace Culture,” scheduled for May 16th at 5 pm EST.  Look out for the zoom link on the AIRS SIG listserv. In addition. Dr. Erguder will also be hosting a drop-in diversity and equity consultation group where folks can discuss their specific health equity concerns in AIRS settings. The first drop-in session will be April 3 at 4pm EST, and Zoom link will be sent through the AIRS SIG list serv. Please join us for a great discussion about these important topics.