An Evaluation of the Belfast Trust Alcohol Recovery Centre
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An Evaluation of Alcohol Recovery Centre: Implications for Service Delivery, Patient Benefit and Harm Reduction
IRAS ID
200134
Contact name
Anne Campbell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
QUB
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 0 days
Research summary
A 2014 Trust-wide alcohol screening audit of over 1000 Emergency Department (ED) attendees confirmed 49% were drinking to harmful levels, whilst 22% were potentially dependent drinkers. Northern Ireland has seen alcohol-related harms such as liver disease steadily rising and alcohol-related hospital admissions increasing by 61% between 2000/01 and 2009/10, with a further rise since 2011/12. In 2014 there were 59 reported physical assaults of staff members in Belfast Trust EDs with alcohol or drugs contributing to the majority of these.
It is envisaged that the Alcohol Recovery Centre (ARC) will demonstrate the improved utilisation of partnership resources by the provision of a focused service for people in the Belfast City localities who are intoxicated with alcohol and require supportive recovery measures and / or minor injury treatment. The ARC will offer an alternative pathway to the current transfer of intoxicated individuals to the Emergency Departments (ED) to ‘sober up’ utilising ED facilities that are required for the treatment of acutely ill and injured patients.The research will consider the workers' and patients' views of the impact of an ARC on health service provision, patient well-being and the community generally and what, if any, improvements in the delivery of healthcare the ARC can offer.
It will utilise a series of interviews with ARC, ED staff and patients to obtain their views on the service in both units making comparisons across times when the ARC is in operation and times when it is not.The mixed methods evaluation will address four research questions:
1. What is the impact of ARCs on the work practices and professional identities of frontline staff in managing the intoxicated and other related work activities?
2. What are the key ingredients required for successful implementation and what barriers to implementation exist across partnerships?
3. What is the impact of ARCs on working practices of front-line professionals in the emergency care system?
4. What are ARC patient views on the initiative?
The study will use three primary research tools to gather data and thereby respond to the objectives as outlined above; a series of semi structured interviews with operational partners (police, paramedic staff and medical staff), a short likert style questionnaire to a sample of ARC users and a series of non-participant observation of interaction between medical staff, PSNI and paramedic staff who are associated with the ARC unit.REC name
HSC REC A
REC reference
16/NI/0025
Date of REC Opinion
11 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion