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Psychological therapy is a 'talking therapy', delivered through in-person meetings and by telephone. This research focusses on language use in telephone interactions between patients and Personal Wellbeing Practitioners (PWPs) in NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) calls.
There is some evidence that the quality of interaction in therapy delivered by phone can be just as good as in therapy delivered face-to-face (Irvine et al 2020). However, patients often have misgivings about the prospect of receiving support by phone rather than in person.
What sort of issues might arise when offering therapy by phone and under time pressure?
In these studies of language use in a workplace setting, we see responses which do not match the patterning of preferred/dispreferred responses in ordinary conversation.
See the case study on Question and Answer Sequences for more background on preferred/dispreferred responses
These studies use the techniques of Conversation Analysis, which explore in detail:
language as action: what is each speaker trying to achieve?
linguistic design: what linguistic choices has the speaker (unconsciously) made?
the sequence of talk: how does the hearer respond? what happens next?
In a short telephone therapy call: what does the Personal Wellbeing Practitioner want to achieve, what linguistic choices do they make, and how does the patient respond to those choices?
The main findings of the two studies are:
patients are sometimes offered a 'choice' which does not in fact involve any choice, but is instead an offer of a single option which they must either accept or reject;
there is a tension between the practitioner's need to follow a strict protocol and the stated goal of providing a personalised patient experience.
The evidence for both comes from the patterns of language use by practitioners and patients.
A longer explanation of the research study
Pre-Workshop Talk by Annie Irvine and Paul Drew [11 mins]
Slides for the Pre-Workshop Talk