How does the HCR-20 guide real-world clinical decisions about risk
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A mixed-methods approach investigating how the HCR-20 tool guides real-world clinical decisions about risk
IRAS ID
324461
Contact name
Alexander Challinor
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cheshire Wirral Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
1623, NHS
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 3 days
Research summary
Professionals involved in violence risk assessment and management face complex and challenging real-world decisions every day. Tools have been developed, evaluated, and implemented in practice with the aim to improve our assessment of risk and help guide our decision-making.Clinical decision making ultimately involves individuals’ values, attitudes, and biases. This has been found to be particularly important in the assessment and management of risk. Structured risk assessment tools have been developed to reduce these factors, emerging with the goal of addressing the limitations of unstructured clinical decision making.
The Historical, Clinical, and Risk Management – 20 (HCR-20) is a structured violence risk assessment tool that has been extensively researched with implementation into worldwide clinical practice. The research evidence base for the HCR-20 does not relate to how the tool is being used in everyday clinical practice. An important step in investigating how the tool is use in every day clinical practice is to evaluate how it is being used by organisations, clinical teams, and individual clinicians making decisions about violence risk.
The aim of this study is to investigate how the HCR-20 tool helps guide clinical decisions in real-world clinical practice. This qualitative work will offer an invaluable insight into how the HCR-20 risk instrument translate into clinical decision-making around risk and how the tool is used in clinical practice.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/NW/0101
Date of REC Opinion
31 Aug 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion