The use of therapeutic untruths by learning disability nursing students.

Karen Mckenzie,Ian James,Suzanne Taylor,George Murray

doi:10.1177/0969733020928130

Abstract

Background:The use of therapeutic untruths raises a number of ethical issues, which have begun to be explored to some extent, particularly in dementia care services, where their use has been found to be high. Little is known, however, about their use by health professionals working in learning disability services.Research question:The study aimed to explore the frequency of use of therapeutic untruths by student learning disability nurses, and by their colleagues; how effective the students perceived them to be as a means of responding to behaviours that challenge; and their level of comfort with using them.Research design:A correlational design was used to gather data from an online version of the Best Interest Scale, adapted for a learning disability context. Participants were 30 learning disability student nurses (female = 28, ages 18–48 years, M = 26.8, standard deviation = 7.3) studying at a university in the North-East of England.Ethical considerations:The study was reviewed and received ethical approval from the first author’s university ethics committee.Findings:Overall, 96% of participants reported using therapeutic untruths. ‘Omission’ was the most frequently used type of therapeutic untruths, the most effective and the type that the students felt most comfortable using. Frequency of use of therapeutic untruths correlated significantly and positively with perceived effectiveness and the level of comfort that the students felt when using them, for all types of therapeutic untruths.Conclusion:The use of therapeutic untruths by the student nurses was consistent with that found in research in dementia care services in the United Kingdom and abroad. Further research to explore the generalisability of the results to the wider context of learning disability services is needed. The study highlights that there may be a need for more formal guidance and educational input to student nurses in the use of therapeutic untruths with people with a learning disability.

Highlights

A key aim of nurse education is to train skilled and competent professionals with an appropriate value base
In order to address the dearth of research in this area, the present study explores the experiences of learning disability student nurses in relation to the frequency of use of therapeutic untruths with people with a learning disability, both by themselves and colleagues; how effective they perceive them to be as a means of responding to behaviours that challenge; and the level of comfort of the students with using them
These figures are consistent with the levels of use of therapeutic untruths found in dementia care services[4] and suggest that the use of therapeutic untruths may be as common in learning disability services as it has found to be in dementia care services

Summary

Introduction

A key aim of nurse education is to train skilled and competent professionals with an appropriate value base. In order to address this, the present study aims to explore the experiences of learning disability student nurses in relation to the frequency of use of therapeutic untruths with people with a learning disability, both by themselves and colleagues, how effective they perceive them to be as a means of responding to behaviours that challenge, and the level of comfort of the students with using them. Research question: The study aimed to explore the frequency of use of therapeutic untruths by student learning disability nurses, and by their colleagues; how effective the students perceived them to be as a means of responding to behaviours that challenge; and their level of comfort with using them. Healthcare professionals, face a dilemma in relation to the use of therapeutic untruths and must consider the legal, ethical and clinical issues when making decisions about this practice.[6,10] This means that the extent to which therapeutic untruths are used may be influenced by the ethical stance that staff adopt in relation to therapeutic untruths and the associated moral discomfort if they use them in practice

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion