Occupational compassion in health care: Impact on self-care behaviours [COVID-19]
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring the impact of Covid-19 on experiences of compassionate care in healthcare professionals: The impact on patient care, care for colleagues and care for self.
IRAS ID
284890
Contact name
Helen Egan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Birmingham City University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 20 days
Research summary
Concerns have been periodically raised about the lack of compassion in health care settings. The resulting demands for an increase in consistent compassionate care for patients have frequently failed to acknowledge the potentially detrimental implications for healthcare professionals including compassion fatigue and a failure to care for oneself. Building on previous research (Egan et al., 2018), this work will look particularly at the experience of working during a pandemic when professional expectations, patient care and patient outcomes may be significantly altered from usual, for example with redeployment, higher patient mortality and different interactions with relatives. The impact of this experience on the health and wellbeing of HCP’s will be explored and findings will help to identify and inform necessary support and interventions for NHS workers and to highlight positive working practices which may act as mediators of workplace stress for the future.\nSemi-structured interviews will be conducted with 20-30 health care professionals working in healthcare settings (e.g. general practice, hospitals) in England during the COVID-19 pandemic as medical doctors (both generalist and specialist practitioners), nursing professionals or physiotherapists (working with COVID-19 patients). HCP who have been redeployed to clinical roles will also be included in the study. \nParticipants will be recruited through opportunity sampling and will be invited by the research team or through snowball sampling to take part in the study. Interviews will be conducted via Skype, MS Teams or telephone lasting approximately 30-45 minutes and will be audio recorded\nSemi-structured interviews will examine participants’ beliefs and understanding of compassion in the workplace, toward patients, colleagues and self, with a particular focus on how this relates to self-care and health behaviours (interview schedule developed from Egan et al, 2018).\nAudio recordings of interviews will be transcribed in verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) procedural steps. \n
REC name
N/A
REC reference
N/A