Compassion Project: Developing an Empathy-Based Stress Intervention

NCT ID: NCT06343818

Last Updated: 2024-04-03

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 100 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-08-01
• Study Completion Date: 2027-08-31

Brief Summary

Compassion is recognising that someone is suffering and wanting to help them. Compassion fatigue is a reduction in capacity to feel compassion for others. Secondary trauma is the experience of traumatic responses to hearing about someone else's trauma. Burnout is depersonalisation, emotional exhaustion, and feeling less good at one's job. Compassion fatigue, secondary trauma and burnout can all be referred to as empathy-based stress. This is a problem for healthcare staff and their patients.

Staff experiencing empathy-based stress deliver less high quality care, which can lead to serious consequences for patients. Empathy-based stress is also associated with staff sickness, which is bad for staff and costly to the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS).

Child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) wards are busy, high-pressure environments where families and young people are often upset, resources are stretched, and staff are managing high levels of patient risk of self-harm or suicide.

The principal investigator has already reviewed research on empathy-based stress and interventions to prevent and/or reduce it in mental health ward staff. This evidence has been presented to CAMHS ward staff, managers, commissioners, patients and families and these stakeholders have co-designed an intervention for wards, to reduce empathy-based stress. The intervention aims to help staff to feel better and care better.

This pilot study aims to test and improve our intervention on two CAMHS wards, measuring how useful and well-liked it is, and how feasible it would be to use it and to test it on more wards. Staff on CAMHS wards will be offered a modular intervention including psychoeducation about empathy based stress and ways of combatting it, and workplace stressor and management toolkits. NHS CAMHS ward staff and patients will be asked to complete questionnaires and a subsample of staff will be asked to complete interviews about the process of the intervention.

Detailed Description

A novel intervention aiming to reduce empathy-based stress in staff will be piloted sequentially on two adolescent mental health wards. After delivery on the first ward, feedback from post-intervention questionnaires and interviews with a subsample of staff will be used to modify the intervention before delivery on the second ward. The study aims to assess acceptability, usefulness and feasibility of the intervention, and feasibility of using these study methods (with a view to potentially trialing this intervention at a later date).

The intervention is called The Compassion Project, and it is a 6 month package which aims to target individual staff understanding and coping responses and also organisational practices. The Compassion Project uses a multi-level approach incorporating staff training, a range of resources and support for staff. These will include training materials (in audio, video and written forms), opportunities to discuss how current ward practices could be improved and to celebrate those which are working well. This intervention involves a modular structure encompassing individual, team and more organisational (through targeting management staff) levels of intervention. A working group of Compassion Champions from all levels of ward staff groups will work to embed the principles in the ward's practice. The intervention has been developed using information from a systematic literature review, Intervention Mapping and co-design with stakeholders.

The study uses a repeated AB design. Repeated baseline (A) and post-intervention (B) measures will be collected, then this will be repeated on the second ward. A mid-point measure will also be collected. The four measurement timepoints are -1 month, 0 months, 3 months and 6 months for staff to complete questionnaires. In addition, young people and parents/carers cared for by the ward at the time of intervention will be asked to complete two questionnaires at the point of discharge. Ward level measures (e.g. number of incidents) will allow context to be understood and also capture any changes over the course of the intervention, they will contribute to economic analyses also.

Conditions

Reduction of Empathy-Based Stress in Healthcare Staff

Study Design

• Allocation Method: NON_RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: SEQUENTIAL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Pilot Ward Site 1

First ward site will pilot the intervention which will then be refined before delivery at second ward site

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

The Compassion Project: Intervention to Reduce Empathy-Based Stress in Staff

Intervention Type: OTHER

Six month package of training and resources delivered to ward staff, including bite-sized audio, video and written materials. Face to face training will be provided weekly by a clinical psychologist. A staff group of 'compassion champions' will be responsible for embedding the intervention.

Pilot Ward Site 2

Second ward will pilot refined intervention

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

The Compassion Project: Intervention to Reduce Empathy-Based Stress in Staff

Intervention Type: OTHER

Six month package of training and resources delivered to ward staff, including bite-sized audio, video and written materials. Face to face training will be provided weekly by a clinical psychologist. A staff group of 'compassion champions' will be responsible for embedding the intervention.

Interventions

The Compassion Project: Intervention to Reduce Empathy-Based Stress in Staff

Six month package of training and resources delivered to ward staff, including bite-sized audio, video and written materials. Face to face training will be provided weekly by a clinical psychologist. A staff group of 'compassion champions' will be responsible for embedding the intervention.

Intervention Type: OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Staff working on the 2 adolescent mental health ward sites at this time. All young people and parents/carers who are discharged during the time period of the intervention.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 13 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

National Institute for Health Research, United Kingdom

OTHER_GOV

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

OTHER_GOV

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Bath

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Dr Lucy Maddox

Principal Investigator

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Lucy Maddox, DClinPsy

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Bath

Central Contacts

Lucy Maddox, DClinPsy

Role: CONTACT

lm2436@bath.ac.uk

01225 388388

Paul Chadwick, DClinPsy

Role: CONTACT

pdjc20@bath.ac.uk

Other Identifiers

NIHR301578

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id