Noble social worker gives presentation
By Allison Haskins
Nina Slovik, Director of Psychiatric Services at Noble Hospital, recently had the opportunity to travel to Minnesota and train their social work staff on suicide risk assessment
The week of Jan. 16, Slovik visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
The Mayo Clinic is a non-profit medical practice group that specializes in treating difficult patients.
The Clinic has its campuses in Minnesota satellites in Florida and Arizona, and 70 smaller facilities across the country.
An old college friend of Slovik who currently works at Mayo, thought of her when staff asked for training specifically on the subject of suicide risk assessment.”
Slovik held five sessions over four days for the 100 social workers in most of the 52 clinical departments within the Mayo Clinic.
Slovik said she feels her overall experience at the Mayo Clinic was, “great for our community and great for Noble,” because of the opportunity to learn about their practice model, while giving them the perspective of a small community hospital doing excellent work.”
Intuition, clinical experience, and simply being authentic are key components to treatment. A focus of the training was that treatment occurs within the context of every interaction that social workers have with their patients, and therefore, there is an opportunity to understand a patient and their risk for suicide, by taking time to listen to them and talk with them.”
“I would be excited if they ever asked me back. It was a fantastic experience. I think I learned as much as I taught,” said Slovik.
