Patients’ experience of formulation-sharing with Clinical Psychology
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A grounded theory analysis of patients’ experience of formulation sharing with clinical psychologists.
IRAS ID
135288
Contact name
Michael Stewart
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust
Research summary
Psychological formulation is defined as a way of explaining the development and maintenance of patients’ problems using psychological theories. It is a central part of clinical psychology practice (British Psychological Society, 2011). The aim of the research is to gain a greater understanding about how patients experience the sharing of psychological formulations in their therapy sessions with clinical psychologists.
Clinical psychologists working in Leicestershire mental health services will be asked if they would like to participate. The Researcher will aim to recruit four clinical psychologists and four patients to participate in the research. Each clinical psychologist who volunteers will be required to identify and ask a patient that they are working with if they will agree to their therapy sessions being audio recorded.
Once consent is gained, therapy sessions between the clinical psychologist and the patient will be audio recorded. The recorded sessions will be one-to-one sessions between the participant clinical psychologist and the patient. Sessions will take place under the usual circumstances and location of the patient (i.e. sessions will not be specifically setup to accommodate the research). The researcher will listen to the recordings of the sessions and transcribe them. The researcher will then look at what was said to examine how the clinical psychologist explores psychological formulation with the patient and how this impacts them. Patients will then be interviewed about their experiences of formulation sharing process. These interviews will also be transcribed by the researcher. The researcher will use a qualitative methodology (grounded theory) to analyse the therapy session and patient interview transcripts to explain how formulation sharing is experienced by patients.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/EM/0021
Date of REC Opinion
20 Jan 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion