Working with people with personality disorder: utilising service users' views

AIMS AND METHOD To ascertain the views of people with personality disorder on their clinical interactions with professionals, to identify potential solutions to problematic interactions and to compile guidelines on how professionals could improve their interactions with these service users. Qualitative methodology was employed, comprising a modified nominal group technique with two iterative groups and ranking by importance the issues and themes raised. RESULTS There were 13 service users from three separate personality disorder services who actively participated in a group discussion and iterative process. Collectively they indicated considerable areas of deficiency in the quality of their interaction and communication with professionals. These deficits were defined clearly enough to allow the construction of guidelines aimed at preventing or remedying such deficiencies. CONCLUSIONS The contribution of those people with personality disorder who took part in this study was sufficiently thoughtful to allow the development of guidelines that might help staff improve their interactions with such service users. From these guidelines, further training tools are being developed, which will be evaluated in the future. However, because not all those approached chose to participate, the views expressed might not be representative of this group as a whole.