Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to build a theoretical model of how and what clinical psychologists learn from service user and carer involvement in their training.
Design/methodology/approach
– A qualitative research design was adopted, and verbatim transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 clinical psychologists were analysed using grounded theory methodology.
Findings
– Findings indicated that clinical psychologists learned from service user and carer involvement in a variety of ways and a preliminary model was proposed, encompassing four main categories: “mechanisms of learning”, “relational and contextual factors facilitating learning”, “relational and contextual factors hindering learning” and “impact”.
Research limitations/implications
– Further research is required to establish to what extent the current findings may be transferrable to learning from service user and carer involvement in the context of educating professionals from other disciplines. Additionally, participants had limited experiences of carer involvement, and more research in this area specifically would be useful.
Practical implications
– This study advocates for service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training, and specific recommendations are discussed, including service user perspectives.
Originality/value
– Service user and carer involvement has become mandatory in Health Care Professional Council-approved training programmes for mental health professionals, yet if and how learning occurs is poorly understood in this context. This study makes an important contribution in evaluating outcomes of service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training by advancing theoretical understanding of the learning processes involved. The authors are unaware of similar work.
This article uses a research example as a case study of qualitative pluralism in practice to analyse issues involved. The case was a critical narrative analysis of interview data about clinical psychologists ' Personal and Professional Development (PPD). The rationale for a pluralist methodology to address critical research questions is described. To examine participants' PPD in terms of the relationship between individual subjectivities, group identities and societal power relations, elements of IPA, Grounded Theory, DA, and critical deconstruction were combined within a narrative methodology.The pluralist project of multiperspectivity was endangered by the use of critical theory to impose interdependency between methods/levels of analysis. Philosophical errors disrupting the logic of justifiable conclusions were possible. More rigorous, critical reflexivity and thoughtfulness about "epistemological anarchism" (Feyerabend 1975) are needed. Added value (richness, integration, and capacity to consider more interesting and important research questions) nonetheless makes the case for pluralist methodologies strong in the context of research as wider social activity.
This paper explores the personal and professional connections between clinical psychologists in the United Kingdom (UK) and critical/community psychology (CCP). Specifically, it asks how clinical psychologists define the area, how they relate to it and how they apply it in their work. Twenty clinical psychologists responded to an online survey, 12 of whom went on to take part in a follow‐up telephone interview. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The results are divided into three sections: i. “describing CCP”: social justice and a questioning stance are considered, ii. “relating to CCP”: an interplay between lifespan events and personal responses are described and iii. “applying CCP”: a dynamic between role‐specific applications and reality checks that either enable or constrain is illustrated. Although the continued need for a CCP is described, the results highlight both challenges and tensions of practising CCP within clinical psychology.
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