Cavita Bachan
Cavita Bachan- Applied PhD in Health Psychology
Cavita Bachan is a very busy woman. At the age of 29, she has two undergraduate degrees, one masters, and she’s just begun a doctorate in health psychology. She’s also been working as a nurse for eight years, and is now a Charge Nurse at an acute psychiatric hospital in Sussex. I hope her belt’s got a few spare notches, because that’s quite a lot to tuck under it.
All this is progress towards a long-held ambition. When she was at school in Trinidad, her teacher asked the class to write down what they wanted to do when they grew up. “I didn’t know how to phrase it, but I wrote down ‘Family Planning’ or something like that. The teacher said ‘Okay, I’ll keep this and in ten, twenty years, come back to the school and I’ll give it back to you.’ ” After leaving school, Cavita studied for a degree in psychiatric nursing. She read an inspirational book about careers in sexology, and she decided to become a health psychologist specialising in sexual health.
1. (AUDIO) How Cavita decided on a career in health psychology. (approx 2mins)
She decided that she would train in the UK. “I didn’t know how I was going to do it, I thought, I’ll just go and figure it out, so I did.” Her opportunity came when recruiters came to Trinidad looking for nurses to work in a medium secure forensic unit, in an English psychiatric hospital. At first, it was a very lonely experience. “It’s very different, the culture here…and a very different patient culture - it was a facility with lot of self harm and personality disorders, they aren’t common in the Caribbean.”
2. (AUDIO) What happened when Cavita arrived in the UK (approx 2 mins)
Despite the challenges, she immediately signed up to study a full-time psychology degree with the Open University. “I didn’t tell them I was working full-time.….it’s extremely hard, studying and working –when you’ve wound down from a hard shift, it’s very difficult to go and study, so I’d go straight to the library, and study there.” Eventually she moved to a different hospital where she worked four days and had three days off, which she dedicated to study.
To get onto the MSc in Health Psychology, she needed to get a 2:1 in her degree. Because she didn’t want to take any breaks, she applied for the MSc before getting her BSc results. “I spoke to the course administrator, who agreed that I could apply on condition that I got a 2:1.” She was successful, and began a year of commuting from Brighton to London once a week to attend full-time classes. The BSc and MSc has added greatly to Cavita’s skills and capabilities as a nurse. “Patients say to me, ‘my god, these things you say, how do you know this?’. Just the quality of time, how you say things, and when you say it - it take a lot of studying to know how to do that.”
4. (AUDIO) Cavita progresses to the MSc in Health Psychology (approx 2.5 mins)
Becoming a chartered health psychologist is no mean feat. Cavita wanted to take accredited Stage 2 training, in her case this meant taking a doctorate, an Applied PhD in Health Psychology. But she needed a placement – which was a problem. “The area that I wanted was sexual health, but I couldn’t leave my job to take an unpaid placement. I thought, this is all falling apart, now what do I do?”
Cavita stayed in her job, and noticed that nurses on psychiatric wards were often uncomfortable talking to patients about sexual health. She decided her work could bring mental health and sexual health together. So she shared her idea with a clinical psychologist, Heather George. “She said ‘this is what we need in the trust, because it’s a big gap - maybe someone like you, who knows what the need is, can do the study.’ So I found some inspiration then.”
Cavita is currently waiting for an ethics board to approve her proposal, and once that’s done she’ll spend two days a week working with clients and carrying out research, alongside her current job as a Charge Nurse. What’s next? “Hopefully, I’ll be the lead in sexual health in a hospital in terms of teaching and training all staff, forming partnerships with the University [of Brighton], working with patients, consultancy and more research.”
Above all, Cavita’s dedicated to improving the welfare of patients. So it’s great news that she’ll be making quite an impact. I’d love to know what her teacher says when she goes back to Trinidad. Watch this space!
More information about careers in health psychology.
