Testing a recovery-oriented nursing communication framework to encourage collaboration and discussion about aggression prevention: A mixed methods study

Abstract

Recovery-oriented practice is essential in healthcare, yet research exploring methods for integrating recovery-oriented principles in forensic mental health settings is limited. This study involved the co-development, with mental health care nurses and a lived experience expert, and testing of a recovery-oriented script for forensic mental health nurses to use when communicating with consumers at high-risk of imminent aggression. The aim was to examine whether nurses perceived the script as more empathic when the script included specific references to empathy, compared to an equivalent script that did not include empathic statements, and to explore nurses' perspectives on whether the script could help prevent aggression. Nurses (n = 54) working in a secure forensic mental health hospital were randomly allocated to read a script containing statements representing nine recovery-oriented principles that also included empathic statements, or an equivalent script that did not include empathic statements. After reading the script, the participants completed a questionnaire involving a recovery-oriented practice scale developed by the authors, measuring the extent to which the scripts reflected recovery-oriented principles, and open-ended questions about the script's potential to prevent aggression. Results revealed no significant difference in nurse perceptions of empathy between the two scripts. Content analysis indicated that nurses perceived the scripts could help prevent aggression.