Interviews and Focus Groups - KICC Development
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Measuring and defining compassionate care in nursing practice; development of the validity, reliability and feasibility of the ‘Key Indicators of Compassionate Care’ – Stage 1 – Interviews to define compassionate care for individual’s experiences of accessing addiction services. Stage 2 - Focus Groups to explore the content validity, usability and acceptability of the developed KICC tool.
IRAS ID
247406
Contact name
Stephen Smith
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Edinburgh Napier University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 27 days
Research summary
There has been a year on year rise in the number of drug-related deaths in Scotland. In 2017, 934 drug related deaths were registered, the highest number ever recorded and an increase of 105% compared to the figure recorded in 2007 (National Records of Scotland, 2018). Government research has also found that public stigma towards people with a history of substance addiction still exists in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2016)
Stigma has negative consequences on people who are experiencing addiction to drugs in that it leads to barriers for accessing treatment and seeking help. Stigma leads to low self-esteem and lack of belief in their own abilities to recover from addiction for the person experiencing addiction (UK Drug Policy Commission, 2010). Stigma becomes internalised and results in a negative self-view and can exacerbate problems as people may be reluctant to access treatment due to fear of rejection (Matthews, Dwyer & Snoek, 2017).
Compassionate care is defined as “a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it” (Nunberg & Newman, 2011). Focussing service improvement on the practice of compassionate care could be beneficial for people with experience of addiction as it could reduce feelings of stigmatisation and increase positive therapeutic relationships which is found to improve outcomes for people with addiction to illicit drugs.
The purpose of this study is to explore the validity, usability and acceptability of the Key Indicators of Compassionate Care Tool (KICC) (Appendix 13) as a method of gathering feedback from service users on how compassionate they feel their experience was. This measure was developed from the the Six Key Themes of Compassionate Care (Edinburgh Napier University and NHS Lothian, 2012).
This application outlines two study stages that will aim to develop the KICC tool. The feedback gathered from this tool would be used to celebrate good practice and to explore factors for the service to focus on for improvement. The first stage will be interviews with people with experience of addiction to explore their views on what compassionate care means to them and how it should be defined. This will be analysed in relation to the Six Key Themes of Compassionate Care (Appendix 13) to ensure the content validity of the tool.
The second stage will involve three focus groups which will include people with experience of addiction, people with a family member with experience of addiction and professionals who have worked with people with experience of addiction. These focus groups will explore the acceptability and usability of the tool in practice and the relevance of the tool to the group being investigated in this research, people with experience of addiction to illicit drugs. Focus groups will also explore how the feedback gathered using this tool could best be applied to improve compassionate practice.
REC name
South East Scotland REC 02
REC reference
19/SS/0043
Date of REC Opinion
9 May 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion