Producing Culture and Care 1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Producing Culture and Care: An ethnography of the meanings of care and production of expertise in adult inpatient mental health settings
IRAS ID
320196
Contact name
Matthew Day
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Kent
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
199014634, Student number
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 8 days
Research summary
An anthropological study of the meanings of 'care' and how such meanings connect to the production and enactment of clinical and personal expertise by receivers and providers of services at two NHS adult acute inpatient wards.
This research aims to better understand how such meanings are interpreted, negotiated, and manifest through activities, interactions, and performance (practices) within the setting and will explore whether and how the interplay between people, meanings, and practices connect to different outcomes of care, in terms of lived experiences, empirical observations, and the quality measures and metrics used by the NHS organisation, regulators, and commissioners.
Following a series of scandals within the NHS, most notably the 'Independent Inquiry into care provided by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust January 2005 – March 2009', there has been a shift in policymaking and regulation to explicitly focus on the ‘culture’ associated with care delivery. Politicians, health watchdogs, professional institutions, charities, and non-departmental government bodies continue to forecast an increasing demand for NHS mental health services along with concern over the social and economic sustainability of such services and an urgent need for substantial workforce and recruitment developments.
This study is responsive to these areas of concern by contributing an ethnography of how individuals and groups define and learn to provide mental health care for others and themselves, how the organisational structures can enable or inhibit both care and skills development, and it will test methods to increase opportunities for innovation and improvement.
The study will connect the daily realities of receiving and providing mental health care to current local and national measures of quality and performance over time, explore opportunities for improvement, promote an alignment of understandings, and provide commentary on the complex social, moral, material, and semantic economies underpinning care and how particular practices become "the ways things are done around here".
REC name
West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/WM/0155
Date of REC Opinion
30 Aug 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion