Impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of digital mental health services [COVID-19]
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of digital mental health services – Community Staff Experience in Nottingham and Two Other International Centres
IRAS ID
286855
Contact name
Neil Nixon
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Nottingham
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a, n/a
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Under COVID-19 restrictions, mental health services in this and other countries have struggled to maintain service provision despite rapidly altering the ways in which they deliver care, including the adoption of digital technology. Given the imperative to reduce virus transmission, deliver adequate services and consider the potential legacy of current technological change, it is of great importance to understand how staff working in mental healthcare have experienced this change, including barriers and drivers to adoption of technology into clinical practice.
The global nature of COVID-19, with near-parallel experience of infection risk across the world, has meant that these concerns are relevant beyond the UK and that comparison of response in other areas of the world may be informative. Specifically, rapid change in the US and Australian mental healthcare systems may have led to important similarities or differences in the digital response taken, through local contingencies which have not so far been examined. Because both are also predominately English-speaking countries this provides good opportunity for an interview-based comparative study.
We therefore aim to explore changes in digital mental healthcare delivery in our own local mental healthcare Trust (Nottinghamshire Healthcare) and make international comparison with 2 other international sites (Flinders in Australia and Harvard in the USA) who have endured their own experience of COVID-19. We have collaborated with these international centres in developing the current protocol, with particular interest in barriers and facilitators to use of new technology within mental health services.
In order to reduce differences between sites, we will initially focus on the experience of staff working in community mental healthcare, characterising these groups through demographic details, levels of compassion, burnout (work-related exhaustion) and general tendency to adopt new technology, before a more detailed semi-structured interview aiming to understand their experience of COVID-19 related technology change.
REC name
N/A
REC reference
N/A