Fostering a culture of engagement: a pilot study of the outcomes of training mental health nurses working in two UK acute admission units in brief solution-focused therapy techniques

It is widely acknowledged that there are major concerns about quality of care, ward atmosphere, the nature of nurse–patient interactions and patient outcomes in UK psychiatric acute admission units. Brief solution-focused therapy (SFT) is an approach which aims to shift the focus of interactions in professional care away from the traditional concentration on an individual's problems and weaknesses towards a more proactive identification of their strengths and positive coping mechanisms. This approach relies on a collaborative engagement with patients, in which the nurse or therapist using simple language aims to help the patient construct a plan to ensure their immediate safety while working to identify, focus on and reinforce their strengths and coping mechanisms in the achievement of identified future goals. This paper reports on a pilot study whose principal objective was to determine whether a short training in brief SFT for psychiatric nurses can produce measurable improvements in nurse–patient interactions in two psychiatric acute admission wards. In this study, 36 nurses undertook a 2-day training course in SFT and were followed up 3 months after training. Positive results were obtained on a number of measures indicating that nurses had acquired knowledge and skills and were applying SFT techniques in their clinical work.