She now practices as a nationally certified massage therapist and uses therapeutic touch on people who cannot receive hands-on massage such as burn victims, the frail elerly, and those for whom touch is difficult due to past trauma. Filling patient needs Susan Lyle, RN, MSN, CS, an oncology nurse, perceived a gap in psychosocial services with many cancer patients and their families. Although her graduate school study had provided her with basic psychiatric concepts, she felt the need to deepen her understanding in psychopathology, so she attended two years of psychotherapy training at the Washington School of Psychiatry. She followed that with a 60-hour training program in hypnosis through the American Hypnosis Training Academy in Silver Spring, Maryland. Hypnosis proved effective as a brief therapeutic intervention by focusing the patient's attention.
Some patients are initially skeptical.
Hypnosis is a lot more than putting someone into a trance. It's helping them translate their problems into a framework that allows them to solve their own problems - the framework comes from within the client. Lyle is now a certified practitioner of hypnotherapy, and has expanded her practice to include stress management therapy for professionals, often follow nurses, to prevent and treat job burnout. Both Lyle and Kamens practice at the Evergreen Center for Well-Being in Annandale, Virginia. Nursing evolution and diversification of practice Mary Phelps, Nancy Kamens, and Susan Lyle have all been in nursing for over 20 years, but with their study and use of complementary modalities, they believe that their practices have evolved dramatically.