A Delphi survey of patients' views of services for borderline personality disorder: A preliminary report

Abstract

AbstractBackground Department of Health guidelines stipulate that specialist personality disorder services should gather feedback from service users.Aim The Gwylfa Therapy Service (GTS) is a new specialist service for people with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The aim of this study was to gather users' views of services sought and/or received before the inception of the GTS and their views of the GTS.Method A Delphi survey method was used first to elicit patients' views on services, and then to identify levels of consensus on the views generated.Results The findings presented here identify what service users value in the treatment they receive, namely respect, professionalism, a service that meets their needs and personal support. Opinions regarding non‐specialist services indicated that, overall, police, general practitioners, community psychiatric nurses, psychologists and counsellors were viewed positively, and psychiatric hospital staff was viewed positively but with room for improvement. General hospital staff was viewed unfavourably. Users' views of the GTS were favourable.Discussion This study begins to shed light upon the education, training and supervision needs of staff from services that come into contact with patients with BPD. Furthermore, the way these services may be better integrated with each other and GTS is identified as requiring attention. Care must be taken to avoid distressing, damaging and disaffecting patients as they pass through general services en route to a specialist team. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.