Introduction
Thank you for meeting with me today. As you know, I’d like to talk to you about your experience of the psychology sessions with client X on the ward. My aim is to get to know how you came to meet with client X, how the sessions were conducted, what you believe might have been beneficial about the sessions, and any barriers you might have experienced. I will not ask you to speak about anything confidential that was shared in the sessions. To start with, I’ll be asking you about how clients access psychology on the ward and how you came to meet with client X.
Context of psychology on the ward • How long have you worked on the unit?
• Approximately how many clients have your worked with on the unit during this time?
• How do psychologists usually become involved in the care of service users on the ward?
• How many sessions do you usually see clients for? o How is this usually decided?
• How do you usually determine the focus of the sessions with clients? o Does this sometimes change during sessions?
• Is there a particular therapeutic approach that you usually take? Background to meeting service user
• How did you first come to know of client X on the ward?
• How did client X first come to be referred for psychology sessions? • How did the team believe client X might benefit from sessions?
o Did this fit with your ideas?
o What informed this idea?
• Did you have any ideas of what the focus of the sessions might be prior to meeting with client X?
o What informed this idea? Description of meetings with client
• How many sessions have you had with client X?
• What has been your overall experience of working with client X? o How did this fit your expectations?
• How was the focus/goals of your sessions decided? o Did this change during the course of sessions? o How beneficial was this approach in your opinion?
• What psychological models or approaches did you draw on in working with client X?
o How did you decide on these?
o How beneficial do you think these were? • Is the intervention now complete?
o How was this decision made? o What influenced this decision? The therapeutic relationship
• What was your experience of trying to establish a therapeutic relationship with client X?
o How important was this to the intervention?
• To what extent did you feel that you were able to achieve a therapeutic alliance with client X?
o Was there anything that got in the way of doing this?
• Was there anything about the inpatient setting that made it made it easier or harder to achieve a therapeutic alliance?
o Did you make any changes to the way you were working as a result of this?
• Do you believe client X was able to talk openly about the issues that were affecting them the most?
o How important was this to the intervention? o Was there anything that made this more difficult?
• Did you feel that you and client X agreed on what the main difficulties were? o How important was this to the intervention?
o Was there anything that made this more difficult? • Did you feel that you agreed on the focus of the sessions?
o How important was this to the intervention? o Was there anything that made this more difficult?
• Did you feel that you agreed on what you wanted to achieve in sessions? o How important was this to the intervention?
o Was there anything that made this more difficult? Barriers to practice and adaptations made
• How, if at all, did the inpatient setting impact on undertaking psychology sessions with client X?
• Were there any constraints or barriers to your usual practice? o In what ways do you think this impacted your sessions? o How did you manage these?
• Did you need to make any adaptations to your practice or sessions with client X?
o In what ways?
o What impact did this have?
• In an ideal setting, would you have liked to done anything differently in working with client X?
o How do you think this might have helped? Impact of sessions for client X
• How helpful do you believe the sessions were for client X? o What aspects were most helpful?
o Was there anything that was unhelpful?
• How do you think the sessions made a difference for client X? o What changes did you notice?
o At what point did you notice these changes?
• Did the sessions make a difference to the way client X understood the difficulties they were struggling with?
o What changes did you notice?
o At what point did you notice these changes?
• Did the sessions make a difference to the way client X thinks about things more generally?
o What changes did you notice?
o At what point did you notice these changes?
• Did the sessions make a difference to the way client X feels about themself? o What changes did you notice?
• Did the sessions made a difference to the way client X acts? o What changes did you notice?
o At what point did you notice these changes?
• Did the sessions make a difference to the way client X thinks about the future?
o What changes did you notice?
o At what point did you notice these changes? Conclusion
• Are there any ways in which you could have improved the effectiveness of your meetings?
o How would this be helpful?
• Are there any changes that could be made to the setting to make your sessions more productive?