Evaluating Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland Complexity & Adversity Network
Background:
QNIS is an organisation that seeks to promote excellence in community nursing across Scotland. QNIS supports, develops, and inspires Scotland’s community nurses and midwives to be agents for health improvement and catalysts for social change. QNIS develops programmes and initiatives to help community nurses develop their expertise to drive positive action to build a healthier, kinder, fairer, greener Scotland.
QNIS have sought an independent research evaluation from a partnership between the University of Salford and the University of Nottingham, to investigate the impact on participants of engaging in a new staff development/education programme currently being piloted – The Complexity and Adversity Network (C&AN).
The Complexity and Adversity Network (C&AN) has been designed for community nurses and midwives working in primary care, in areas with high levels of poverty, deprivation and multimorbidity. The aim of the programme is support participants to learn more about coping with, and helping others cope with, the complex interpersonal relationships that are often part of everyday nursing work in this context. The programme comprises 10 monthly online workshops. Each workshop combines a seminar with an expert speaker, followed by a reflective practice work discussion group facilitated by a clinician with psychodynamic expertise.
Aim:
The evaluation is intended to understand if the programme is successful in achieving its intended aims, and to generate significant learning about participant experience and outcomes, that will be used to refine the C&AN programme, build evidence to support wider roll out of the innovation and inform future implementation.
Objectives:
- Elucidate the underpinning pedagogical principles and approaches of this new education intervention, and identify key learning for design of effective experiential learning programmes intended to improve relational skills in health and social care practitioners
- Evaluate the extent to which the C&AN aims have been realised, and how, using data from a range of key stakeholders
- Assess the impact on participants of completing the programme immediately on completion, and at three-month follow-up, and the mechanisms/processes by which any identified impacts and benefits occur
- Investigate participant’s subsequent experience of their nursing practice in light of the programme
- Generate learning from the pilot implementation that can be used to inform future development and implementation planning
Methods:
In line with the aims and focus of the C&AN programme a psycho-social research framework has been adopted. This 18 month study utilises mixed methods, with a focus on psychodynamic and relational components of nursing practice over. Study design is informed by real-world evaluation and evaluative pedagogical research principles. A range of data will be gathered from key stakeholders across the process of implementing the C&AN programme, to generate new knowledge regarding pedagogical design, programme outcomes and impact, the factors that were important to this and the context in which achievement was made possible.
Outcomes have been identified as changes in levels of compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, empathy and, emotional awareness in relation to self. These will be measured using routinely collected pre-test, midpoint and immediate post-test, outcome measures (ProQoL V and TRAS-N), These measures will be repeated at 3-month follow-up.
We will investigate the perceived reasons for any identified changes, through:
- Analysis of anonymised, themed, fieldwork notes from key stakeholders
- Analysis of a quality survey administered to programme participants pre, mid and post intervention
- Conducting focus-groups and/or interviews with a subsample of participants at completion of the programme and at 3-month follow-up
Funder: Phillip Burdett Trust
Team:
Emma Tague
Dr Gary Winship (University of Nottingham)
Dr Sarah Doyle (QNIS)
Research Group: Centre of Applied health Research, Mental Health and Neurodiversity