Evaluation of therapeutic relationship skills training for mental health professionals: the Therapeutic Relationship Enabling Programme (TREP)

Impact of the 'reserved therapeutic space' nursing intervention on patient health outcomes: An intervention study in acute mental health units

AIMS

To evaluate the effectiveness of the 'reserved therapeutic space' intervention for improving the nurse-patient therapeutic relationship in acute mental health units in Spain.

DESIGN

Multicentre intervention study with control group.

METHODS

The study will be carried out in 12 mental health units. The 'reserved therapeutic space' intervention to be tested has been co-designed and validated by both nurses and patients. The quality of the therapeutic relationship, the care received and perceived coercion among patients will be assessed. An estimated 131 patients per group are expected to participate. Funding was granted by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. Co-financed by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) (PI21/00605)) and College of Nurses of Barcelona (PR-487/2021). The proposal was approved by all the Research Ethics Committees of participating centres.

RESULTS

This project will lead to changes in clinical practice, transforming the current models of organization and care management in mental health hospitalization units. No patient or public contribution.

How technology-enhanced experiential e-learning can facilitate the development of person-centred communication skills online for health-care students: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a new challenge to medical education-health-care students had fewer opportunities to interact with and treat real patients in clinical settings. Interpersonal communication skills are often developed through human interaction and communication in person, and few studies have proposed feasible digital solutions to develop learners' communication skills. Consequently, understanding how medical teachers facilitate and implement online training programmes, with feasible instruments, to enhance students' learning effectiveness when in-person training is not possible is critical.

METHODS

By using a convenience sampling method, we recruited 26 health-care students from seven medical schools in Taiwan. Through semistructured interviews and the thematic analysis technique, we analysed the latent learning factors from the experience of implementing the technology-enhanced experiential e-learning tool 'mPath'.

RESULTS

Three themes were generated: A) transferring theory into practice, B) increasing authenticity with analytical features, and C) maintaining autonomy with nondirective learning. The features accessibility, flexibility, intractability, and visualisation with the characteristics of remote accessibility and flexibility, repetition and retrospect, feedback requesting, and visualised analytical reports were considered to enhance learning outcomes.

CONCLUSION

This study indicated how online training using technology could develop the participants' person-centred communication skills and what features influenced the learning outcomes of social distancing. mPath may be a feasible online learning approach and has provided inspiration for developing health-care students' communication skills when in-person training is not possible.