Patient experience of psychology on an acute inpatient ward
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An Exploration of the Patient Experience of Psychological Therapy on an Acute Inpatient Ward
IRAS ID
296820
Contact name
Sean Harper
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
ACCORD
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 3 days
Research summary
The central research objective of this project is to explore the experience of patients receiving psychological therapy on the acute ward of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. The research will seek to identify what aspects of therapy patients find most helpful and valuable, what aspects of therapy are unhelpful and what patients think should be done differently. The patient experience of psychological therapy is an important topic because it has been widely recommended that inpatients on acute wards should have access to psychological therapies (NICE, 2014, 2018, 2020; BPS, 2021). Patients themselves have also expressed a strong desire for increased access to psychological therapies, identifying this as an important priority in receiving good quality care and recovery.
Despite the established importance of psychological therapies there is very little qualitative research on the patient experience of these therapies, and reviews of the quantitative evidence have identified that most research does not report on patient-centred and patient-reported outcomes. Therefore, there is currently very little known about the experience of acute patients receiving psychological therapy in hospitals. An improved understanding of this experience will improve the care received by patients and contribute to a better understanding of how to effectively deliver psychological therapy on acute wards.
People who take part in the study will be interviewed about their experience of seeing a clinical psychologist while on the acute ward of the hospital and engaging in therapy. These interviews will then be analysed through the qualitative method of interpretive phenomenological analysis to identify both common themes across multiple participants and unique aspects of individual’s experiences. Participants will be current patients on an acute ward of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital who have received at least one session of individual psychological therapy with a clinical psychologist.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
23/ES/0023
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jun 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion