Defining the role of the therapist in influencing patient outcomes
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The contribution of therapist factors towards patient outcomes during routine psychological therapy practice.
IRAS ID
221057
Contact name
Katy James
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Sheffield
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme has created major investment in psychological therapies for mental health difficulties and the delivery of the NICE guidelines for depression and anxiety in stepped care service delivery systems. However, research suggests that despite the delivery of protocol-adherent and evidenced-based practice, major differences still are apparent between psychotherapists delivering treatment. New statistical methods can now also isloate and measure the differences in outcomes that are due to patients and therapists factors. This has shown that there are differences between the average outcomes of different therapists (called the 'therapist effect'), and that these are more significant that differences between the types of therapy delivered. This study is the first of a series that will look into the size of the 'therapist effect' within a large IAPT service. This study therefore aims to investigate the size of the effect size between therapists.
Qualified therapists in an NHS service will be included in this study. They will have a range of numbers of years’ experience and level of training. Existing and routinely collected anonymised outcome data measuring depression and anxiety outcomes will be used to determine each therapists effective practice in terms of their patient outcomes. This analysis will be completed using data from the year before and then the year after a naturally occurring service-led organisational intervention focusing on improving clinical outcomes. The comparison of these two datasets will form an investigation into the impact of this service change in terms of the size of the therapist effect. The final phase of the research project (not included within this current application), will be to develop a research-informed intervention focusing on the therapists, aiming to improve therapist outcomes and so improve the consistency of outcomes across therapists.
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/EE/0251
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jun 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion