Collaborative Team Reflective Practice in Trauma Service to Improve Health Care

The importance of reflection and reflective practice is repeatedly reported in trauma literature, with the process of reflective practice being noted as invaluable for clinicians working within trauma settings. Although the literature on medical primary response trauma teams has reported clinicians' management of clinical roles and additional stressors, the practical applications and benefits of reflective practice insofar have not been identified in relation to complex trauma within multidisciplinary mental health services. This study aimed to identify the issues influencing the capacity for collaborative team reflective practice in a multidisciplinary child trauma mental health service within a UK National Health Service trust. Semistructured interviews were used to investigate the issues influencing the capacity for collaborative team reflective practice. The data were fully transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. The results suggest that clinicians working in a multidisciplinary child trauma service experience a positive benefit from collaborative team reflective practice, but that barriers exist, which influence the capacity to reflect. These include the management of reflective practice within the service, and department and service demands including the nature of the work/cases. Recommendations for the service and for future research are suggested to improve the capacity for collaborative team reflective practice.