Therapeutic Relationships within Inpatient units (Version 1)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Therapeutic Relationships within Inpatient units: Carers, Adolescents and Nursing staff (TRI-CAN)
IRAS ID
246547
Contact name
Samantha Hartley
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 29 days
Research summary
When people are experiencing psychological distress, research shows that the most important thing is that they have a good relationship with the people that care for them. Young people and family members really value the relationships they have with staff and when these are positive, there is more improvement in mental health. When young people are in hospital, they tend to see a lot of nurses and nursing assistants every day and only have weekly contact with other professionals like a psychologist or therapist. Having good relationships with nursing staff can help especially when young people struggle to open up in one-to-one sessions with therapists. Young people and families might find it hard to develop good relationships with staff because of their own difficulties, and staff might struggle due to the challenging working environment and stress levels. Some things that could help are staff having support and training to understand young people’s difficulties and build the relationships with them and their family. Some work has already been done in adult services. We want to develop a way of doing this that suits young people, families and staff members who are in hospital-based child and adolescent mental health services. In order to do this, the current study will explore the experiences of young people, family members and staff on what helps and hinders relationships. We will do this using semi-structured individual interviews and qualitative analysis. This will help us to better understand what helps and hinders relationships, and how they are developed and maintained. Using this information, future work will develop new forms of support for relationships in services for children and adolescents. We hope this will make for better relationships in the long run, and better mental wellbeing.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 4
REC reference
18/WS/0131
Date of REC Opinion
16 Aug 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion