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Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation

BACKGROUND: Work stress and compassion fatigue are prevalent among healthcare staff and their negative effects on staff well-being and patient care are well-known. This paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of Schwartz Rounds® (Rounds) in UK healthcare organizations, predominantly part...

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Autores principales: Dawson, Jeremy, McCarthy, Imelda, Taylor, Cath, Hildenbrand, Kristin, Leamy, Mary, Reynolds, Ellie, Maben, Jill
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8076663/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33906664
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06413-4
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author Dawson, Jeremy
McCarthy, Imelda
Taylor, Cath
Hildenbrand, Kristin
Leamy, Mary
Reynolds, Ellie
Maben, Jill
author_facet Dawson, Jeremy
McCarthy, Imelda
Taylor, Cath
Hildenbrand, Kristin
Leamy, Mary
Reynolds, Ellie
Maben, Jill
author_sort Dawson, Jeremy
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Work stress and compassion fatigue are prevalent among healthcare staff and their negative effects on staff well-being and patient care are well-known. This paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of Schwartz Rounds® (Rounds) in UK healthcare organizations, predominantly part of the National Health Service (NHS). Rounds are one-hour, typically monthly, multidisciplinary forums during which clinical and nonclinical healthcare staff discuss the emotional and social demands of delivering patient care. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of Rounds attendance on the psychological distress, work engagement, compassion and self-reflection of healthcare staff. METHODS: We used a pre-post control design to assess the effect of Rounds attendance across 10 UK healthcare organizations. This design was most appropriate given the voluntary nature of Rounds and ensured the study had ecological validity. Self-reported data were collected from attenders and non-attenders at baseline and at eight-months follow-up. The outcomes were psychological distress, work engagement, compassion and self-reflection. RESULTS: During the 8 months’ study duration, regular attenders (N = 51) attended Rounds on average 4 times (2–8). Attenders showed a significantly greater decrease in psychological distress (as measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)) than non-attenders (N = 233; odds ratio of 0.197; 95% confidence interval (0.047–0.823)). However, Rounds attendance had no significant effect on work engagement, compassion and self-reflection. CONCLUSIONS: Rounds attendance was linked to a 19% reduction in psychological distress adjusting for covariates. As an organization-wide intervention, Rounds thus constitute an effective, relatively low-cost intervention to assist staff in dealing with the demands of their work and to improve their well-being. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-021-06413-4.
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spelling pubmed-80766632021-04-27 Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation Dawson, Jeremy McCarthy, Imelda Taylor, Cath Hildenbrand, Kristin Leamy, Mary Reynolds, Ellie Maben, Jill BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Work stress and compassion fatigue are prevalent among healthcare staff and their negative effects on staff well-being and patient care are well-known. This paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of Schwartz Rounds® (Rounds) in UK healthcare organizations, predominantly part of the National Health Service (NHS). Rounds are one-hour, typically monthly, multidisciplinary forums during which clinical and nonclinical healthcare staff discuss the emotional and social demands of delivering patient care. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of Rounds attendance on the psychological distress, work engagement, compassion and self-reflection of healthcare staff. METHODS: We used a pre-post control design to assess the effect of Rounds attendance across 10 UK healthcare organizations. This design was most appropriate given the voluntary nature of Rounds and ensured the study had ecological validity. Self-reported data were collected from attenders and non-attenders at baseline and at eight-months follow-up. The outcomes were psychological distress, work engagement, compassion and self-reflection. RESULTS: During the 8 months’ study duration, regular attenders (N = 51) attended Rounds on average 4 times (2–8). Attenders showed a significantly greater decrease in psychological distress (as measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)) than non-attenders (N = 233; odds ratio of 0.197; 95% confidence interval (0.047–0.823)). However, Rounds attendance had no significant effect on work engagement, compassion and self-reflection. CONCLUSIONS: Rounds attendance was linked to a 19% reduction in psychological distress adjusting for covariates. As an organization-wide intervention, Rounds thus constitute an effective, relatively low-cost intervention to assist staff in dealing with the demands of their work and to improve their well-being. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-021-06413-4. BioMed Central 2021-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8076663/ /pubmed/33906664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06413-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dawson, Jeremy
McCarthy, Imelda
Taylor, Cath
Hildenbrand, Kristin
Leamy, Mary
Reynolds, Ellie
Maben, Jill
Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
title Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
title_full Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
title_fullStr Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
title_full_unstemmed Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
title_short Effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
title_sort effectiveness of a group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of healthcare staff: a pre-post quasi-experimental evaluation
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8076663/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33906664
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06413-4
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