The 'helping relationship' in community palliative care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
“The 'helping relationship' in community palliative care: a therapeutic response to crisis? A qualitative study exploring nurse and patient experience and perception."
IRAS ID
217323
Contact name
Allen Bryant
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 1 days
Research summary
See title.
Within nursing it has become broadly accepted that the 'aesthetics' or 'art of caring' is just as important as the 'empirics' of scientific knowledge. Thus nursing theory and research have asserted the importance of the 'helping' or 'therapeutic' relationship, a concept originally 'crossed over' from the counselling field. Within palliative care, the psychosocial and emotional support of patients with a range of psychological distress is a well established part of the role, as laid out in National Institute of Clinical Excellence guidelines. However it has been a difficult area to define, studies incorporating the patient perspective and experience are lacking and the subject has most often been approached with a communication and counselling 'skills' approach, which doesn't adequately capture the nuances of the nurse-patient interactions in which such relationships are created and maintained.
The current study therefore seeks to examine the 'helping relationship' of specific patients and nurses from both points of view, with a view to exploring their experience and perception of three inter-linked kinds of 'change'. Firstly 'change as crisis'; secondly 'change' within the nurse-patient relationship itself; thirdly, positive or 'therapeutic' change within the participants. The primary research question is therefore whether the above constitutes a therapeutic response to crisis ('the what') and the ways in which this relationship is 're-created' during key interactions at times of stress/crisis (the 'how').
The main anticipated benefit for nurses is greater insight, which could make future interactions and relationships more effective and for patients an enhanced sense of altruism.
The qualitative study design involves the recruitment and interview of specific patients and their palliative nurse, with data analysed according to the principles of two approaches within interpretive phenomenology: ‘thematic content analysis’ (the ’what’) and language-oriented ‘narrative analysis’ (the ‘how’).
Recruitment will be local and the study will run for approximately 11 months.
REC name
Wales REC 3
REC reference
16/WA/0377
Date of REC Opinion
14 Dec 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion