DClinPsy Portfolio Volume 1 of 3 - University of Hertfordshire ...

However, the comments section involved some discussion by Psychology and ‘Other’ as
to how offering refreshments can be a way of conveying respect to the service user and
therefore can be important. The ‘Other’ group rated the question regarding having a
named person responsible for the running of the ward round as least important.
The comments section demonstrated that participants had different views regardless of
professional group e.g. one nurse’s comment suggested that the ward round should be
more holistic and less medically dominated whereas another nurse suggested that ward
rounds should only involve the medical team, with multi-disciplinary meetings held at
another time, and that the Consultant Psychiatrist should chair.
Another reason for a difference in what factors the professionals deemed important is that
the best practice guidelines used for this study were originally put together by a service
user group whose perspective may be different. For example, with regards refreshments,
some nurses’ comments expressed the likelihood of refreshments being used as weapons.
This perspective would be different to the service users that would have been focusing on
making the guidelines empowering.
Methodological issues and limitations
The questionnaire that was devised specifically for this study was not sufficiently piloted
due to time and sample constraints. Piloting was done by asking a few Psychologists to
complete the questionnaire although further piloting may have enabled an improvement
in the wording. For example, one of the questions in the second part of the questionnaire
asked two questions in one when asking if patients and their family/friends are seen
within 15 minutes of their appointment, i.e. not separating patients from family, when
one may be more likely to be seen on time than the other.
Due to the small sample size in each professional group, we were not able to statistically
analyse the data further. Moreover, two professionals did not adequately complete the
details about their discipline, thus reducing the data.
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