Rattray, Megan, Fuss, Belinda, Shelby-James, Tania, Phegan, Caroline, Manger, Sam, Worley, Paul, and Lawn, Sharon (2024) Exploring practice staffs’ perspectives regarding professional roles, confidence, and motivations in delivering mental health care within rural general practice: a qualitative exploration. BMC Primary Care, 25. 395.

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Abstract

Background: General practice is pivotal in delivering mental health care within communities, yet the attitudes and professional factors influencing this provision remain underexplored. This study seeks to understand the perspective of general practice staff around the professional factors that influence the provision of primary mental health care.

Methods: A qualitative study was conducted with semi-structured interviews of 14 general practice staff involved in mental health care. Participants included receptionists (n = 3), nurses (n = 4), practice managers (n = 3), and general practitioners (n = 4), recruited via purposive sampling. The Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) guided the interviews, and thematic analysis was used to identify themes and subthemes.

Results: Three themes were identified. The first, ‘Role identity, skills, and leadership in mental health care,’ included subthemes of distinct role recognition with overlap, essential relational and practical skills, and leadership valued among experienced GPs. The second theme, ‘Confidence and involvement in mental health care,’ covered variability in confidence levels, differing perceptions of involvement, and attitudes towards further involvement. The third theme, ‘Drivers for and outcomes of delivering mental health care,’ revealed intrinsic motivations and acknowledged both benefits and serious consequences.

Conclusion: This study explored general practice staff beliefs about role identity, skills, leadership, confidence, involvement, motivations, and perceptions of benefits in mental health care provision. The findings offer valuable insights into the complexities of mental health care in general practice, with significant implications for practice management and healthcare policy development.

Item ID:	84887
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2731-4553
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Date Deposited:	13 Mar 2025 02:52
FoR Codes:	42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420319 Primary health care @ 60% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420313 Mental health services @ 40%
SEO Codes:	20 HEALTH > 2003 Provision of health and support services > 200310 Primary care @ 30% 20 HEALTH > 2003 Provision of health and support services > 200305 Mental health services @ 70%
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