Examining characteristics of the effective practitioner.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Examining characteristics of the effective practitioner within the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative: The contribution and role of common factors
IRAS ID
125592
Contact name
Jo-Ann Pereira
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Sheffield
Research summary
The current research builds on previous findings which indicate that practitioners use a combination of personal skills (known as common factors) as well as technical skills based on their specific professional training. The research focuses on the role of key common factors (empathy, mindfulness, resilience and interpersonal style).
Participation by NHS practitioners within the Sheffield IAPT service will be voluntary, and they will complete 4 questionnaires tapping common factors. The researcher will be blinded to their identity via a delegated date custodian assigning random identifiers so that the researcher cannot identify practitioners. As a body of practitioners, they have overwhelmingly endorsed this research wanting to participate and have full access to their patient outcome data as a matter of routine practice.
In parallel, secondary analysis of the anonymised routinely collected IAPT data within the Sheffield IAPT service will be analysed via electronic download at the University of Sheffield. This dataset is collected routinely by practitioners as mandated by the Government to facilitate practitioners receiving routine feedback on their practice to enable them to improve patient treatment. The dataset constitutes retrospective, secondary, anonymised and aggregated patient outcome scores and does not include patient identifiers.The research design requires the practitioner-completed questionnaire data to be yoked with their patient outcome data. Practitioners’ identity will be protected as both the practitioner data and their patient outcome data will be yoked using randomly assigned ID numbers different from practitioners’ allocated IAPT ID numbers. This process will be facilitated by the delegated data custodian who will ensure that the CI will only receive anonymous and unidentifiable practitioner data. Therefore, no practitioner or patient will be traceable.
The analyses will identify those common factors that are associated with improved outcomes that can then be fed into general training. All analyses will be at an aggregated level.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/EM/0387
Date of REC Opinion
8 Oct 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion