Changing Minds Training

08/09/2026

You've formed a view before you've even knocked.

Most paramedics do. The call comes down as a mental health job, and by the time you're at the door you've already got an idea in your head for how this goes. It's not laziness, it's how anyone copes with a stack of calls and limited information.

The trouble is that the assumption is often wrong in ways that matter clinically.

Most people living with a mental illness are not in crisis. Plenty of people in crisis have no illness at all. They may have been served an eviction notice, or been recently bereaved. Altered behaviour describes what you are seeing, never why, and delirium, hypoglycaemia, hypoxia and a head injury all arrive looking similar. Someone quiet and compliant may be dissociating, or may have already decided something.

And then the one we'd most like to shift. If you walk in believing you're the transport, everything else follows from that. You're not. You see people at home, at their worst, at the moment they're most likely to say something true. Nobody else in the system gets that.

Five things not to assume are in the carousel, with what to do instead.

This comes from session one of the Student Paramedic Masterclass Series, co-hosted with PocketClinician, covering the difference between mental illness, mental health crisis and acute behavioural disturbance, and the position pre-hospital clinicians actually hold in the system.

8th September, 7 to 8pm. £7.99 for the first session, £9.99 thereafter, or £39.99 for all six.

Comment MASTERCLASS for the booking links.

What's the assumption you've caught yourself making before you've knocked?

07/09/2026

"Known to mental health services."

Five words that quietly change how a call goes before anyone even arrives.

The information is usually accurate. The order is the problem.

You meet the label before you meet the person, and by the time you're through the front door you're checking a conclusion rather than forming one. The assessment narrows. The tone changes. And by the time someone has been on the receiving end of it a few dozen times, they can hear it in your first sentence.

None of this is carelessness. It's a shortcut nobody warned you about.

We've put four of the most common ones in the carousel, along with what to do instead.

This comes from session one of the Student Paramedic Masterclass Series, co-hosted with PocketClinician, which covers the difference between mental illness, mental health crisis and acute behavioural disturbance, and the position pre-hospital clinicians actually hold in the system.

8th September, 7 to 8pm. £7.99 for the first session, £9.99 thereafter, or £39.99 for all six.

Comment MASTERCLASS for the booking links.

What's the thing you've caught yourself doing before you've got out of the vehicle?

03/09/2026

5 days until session one.

The Mental Health Landscape, Tuesday 8th September, 7-8pm.

An hour on the conditions you'll meet pre-hospital, the difference between mental illness, crisis, and acute behavioural disturbance, and the position paramedics hold in a system that doesn't always know what to do with them.

£7.99 for this one and £9.99 thereafter. Sessions can be booked individually so if you can only make some that's completely fine.

For best value, get full access to the entire series (six sessions) for one reduced membership fee. Purchased individually, these sessions would cost £57.94, but as a member you get access to the entire series for just £39.99.

Comment INTERESTED for booking links.

What's the part of a mental health call you'd most want an hour on?

02/09/2026

A note for paramedic science programme leads and practice educators.

Students, and indeed qualified paramedics, consistently tell us that mental health calls are the ones they feel least prepared for, and that placement doesn't always give them a safe space to process what they've seen.

This six part evening series is designed to sit alongside your curriculum rather than duplicate it. Monthly from September to February, online, an hour to ninety minutes each, covering the mental health landscape, communication skills, crisis and su***de risk, capacity and refusal, de-escalation, and sustainable practice.

The series is co-hosted and co-delivered by Changing Minds Training and PocketClinician. Individual places are £7.99 for the first session and £9.99 thereafter, or £39.99 for full series membership, with members booking each session free of charge. We're also happy to talk about cohort places and tailoring content around your module structure.

Full outline, individual booking links and the membership can be found here: https://changing-minds-training.cademy.io/?list=cb12b16f-fdc5-4a22-ad5e-f12979fb7174. For cohort places, message us directly.

Where does mental health currently sit in your programme?

27/08/2026

The objection we hear most often when it comes to mental health training for pre-hospital teams is time.

There's a stack of calls, a target to hit, and a patient who needs a decision. So where exactly does compassion fit?

It is a fair challenge, and we'd far rather it was said out loud than thought quietly. Here's the perspective we would offer.

Most long, difficult, escalating calls become that way after the person on the floor stops feeling safe with the people in front of them. A refusal takes time. An escalation takes time. A second callout to the same address three weeks later takes time.

The time it takes to do it well is almost always less than the time it takes to recover from doing it badly.

That's not a promise that good communication makes every call short. Some calls require longer on scene because the situation is genuinely hard, and no technique changes that.

But there's a difference between a long on scene time because it's needed, and a long on scene time because it went wrong in the first minute. Learning to tell those apart, and to have fewer of the avoidable ones, is a large part of what this series is for.

Six sessions, one evening a month from September to February, co-hosted by Changing Minds Training and PocketClinician. £7.99 for the first, £9.99 after that, or £39.99 for series membership covering all six.

Spaces are limited, book your spot here now: https://changing-minds-training.cademy.io/?list=cb12b16f-fdc5-4a22-ad5e-f12979fb7174

What objection do you hear most about this kind of training?

26/08/2026

Pre-hospital clinicians are trained to save lives, but far less often are they trained for the calls involving someone in mental health crisis, someone refusing care, or someone who has harmed themselves. Those calls make up a big part of the job, and they're consistently the ones people feel least prepared for.

So we've teamed up with PocketClinician to build and deliver a six part masterclass series, running from September through to February. Each session tackles a different part of the job that training rarely covers in depth:

🧠 The Mental Health Landscape: Conditions, crisis, and your place in the system | 8 Sept, 7-8pm

💬 Conversations That Help: Communication skills for mental health calls | 13 Oct, 7-8.30pm

‼️ Responding to Crisis: Suicidal ideation, self-harm, and acute risk | 10 Nov, 7-8.30pm

😵‍💫 When It Gets Complicated: Refusal, capacity, dual diagnosis, and legal frameworks | 8 Dec, 7-8.30pm

🫂 De-escalation in Practice: Tools for high pressure, high emotion situations | 12 Jan, 7-8.30pm

💚 Looking After Yourself: Compassion fatigue, moral injury, and sustainable practice | 9 Feb, 7-8pm

These sessions are ideal for student paramedics, newly qualified paramedics, ambulance clinicians, associate ambulance practitioners, emergency care assistants, and anyone who wants more confidence managing mental health presentations in pre-hospital care.

Expect practical teaching, real-world examples, evidence-based discussion, and plenty of opportunity to challenge the common misconceptions that surround mental health emergencies.

The first masterclass is £7.99, with each session after that at £9.99. Booked individually the full series comes to £57.94. Series membership is £39.99, covering all six, so once you are a member you get each session free of charge.

Comment INTERESTED and we will send you the bookings links!

Which of the six would be most useful to you right now?

20/08/2026

Most teams don't lack care. They lack the skills to act on it when someone's struggling.

This carousel shows what that actually looks like. Before training: noticing someone's off but not wanting to pry, panicking in a crisis because you don't know what to say, a wellbeing policy nobody talks about, return-to-work interviews that feel like a box-ticking exercise. After training: checking in privately and listening without rushing, staying calm enough to ask the right questions, visible MHFAiders that change how a team talks to each other, managers who approach returns with genuine care and an actual plan.

Same situations, different outcomes, because the people in the room know what to do. It's not just the right thing to do either, every £1 invested in employee mental health returns £5 (Deloitte, 2022).

We deliver MHFA England courses in-person and online across the UK, both public and private.

Which side of this do you want your team to be on?

17/08/2026

Some honesty about what these sessions are and aren't.

They aren't lectures. They aren't a slide deck of definitions you could have read yourself. And they aren't a place where anyone gets told they've been doing it wrong.

What you can expect is practical teaching, real-world examples from pre-hospital practice, evidence-based discussion, and plenty of opportunity to challenge the common misconceptions around mental health emergencies.

Some of those misconceptions are ones we all picked up somewhere, and they're far more usefully unpicked in a room than left unexamined on a job.

Bring the call that still bothers you. That's usually where the best conversations start.

Six sessions, monthly from September to February. £7.99 for the first, £9.99 after, or £39.99 for the full series.

Here’s the link to the first session: https://changing-minds-training.cademy.io/the-mental-health-landscape

Spaces are limited, book now!

Description Mental health emergencies are one of the fastest-growing reasons people call 999, yet many student paramedics and ambulance clinicians say they feel least confident when responding to these patients. If you've ever wondered: “Am I going to say the wrong thing?" "What questions should I...

13/08/2026

A quick note on cost, because we know CPD budgets are thin and a lot of this comes out of people's own pockets.

The first masterclass is £7.99. Every session after that is £9.99. Booked one at a time, all six come to £57.94.

Series membership gives you access to the whole thing for £39.99.

Six evenings of teaching covering the mental health landscape, communication skills, su***de and self-harm, capacity and refusal, de-escalation, and sustainable practice, a saving of £17.95 on booking them one at a time.

We priced it this way, with PocketClinician, on purpose. This content should not be something only well-funded trusts and individuals can access.

Secure your membership here: https://changing-minds-training.cademy.io/memberships

What's the biggest barrier to CPD where you work, time or money?

12/08/2026

Most people working in pre-hospital care will be first on scene to a mental health crisis long before they feel ready for one.

Our first student paramedic masterclass opens the series by mapping the ground.

By the end of the hour you'll be able to:
✅ Describe the prevalence and range of mental health conditions encountered in pre-hospital settings
✅ Distinguish between mental illness, mental health crisis, and acute behavioural disturbance
✅ Articulate the unique position paramedics hold in the mental health system

That last outcome matters more than it sounds. Paramedics are often the only professional who sees a person at home, at their worst, at the point they're most willing to admit something is wrong. That isn't a transport role. It's a vantage point nobody else in the system has, and it's worth understanding what it makes possible.

Co-hosted by us and PocketClinician. Expect practical teaching, real-world examples, evidence-based discussion, and plenty of room to challenge the misconceptions that build up around mental health emergencies.

Ideal for student paramedics, newly qualified paramedics, ambulance clinicians, associate ambulance practitioners, emergency care assistants, and anyone who wants more confidence managing mental health presentations in pre-hospital care.

8th September, 7 to 8pm, online. £7.99, or £39.99 for series membership covering all six, with members enrolled onto each session free of charge.

Spaces are limited, book here: https://changing-minds-training.cademy.io/?list=cb12b16f-fdc5-4a22-ad5e-f12979fb7174