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Post‐disaster psychosocial support and quality improvement: A conceptual framework for understanding and improving the quality of psychosocial support programs
Author(s) -
Dückers Michel L. A.,
Thormar Sigridur B.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
nursing and health sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.563
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1442-2018
pISSN - 1441-0745
DOI - 10.1111/nhs.12162
Subject(s) - psychosocial , quality (philosophy) , quality management , process management , equity (law) , process (computing) , mental health , psychology , psychosocial support , outcome (game theory) , applied psychology , nursing , medicine , computer science , service (business) , business , psychotherapist , marketing , political science , philosophy , epistemology , law , operating system , mathematics , mathematical economics
This article is original in that it addresses post‐disaster psychosocial support programs from a quality‐improvement perspective, not from the traditional viewpoint of mental health services. Based on a combination of renowned quality models, a framework is sketched that offers chances to better understand and optimize the quality of post‐disaster psychosocial service delivery. The quality is reflected in the program's structure, process, and outcome. Moreover, quality can be expressed in scores per criterion (i.e. need centeredness, effectiveness, safety, timeliness, efficiency, and equity) that are proposed to be related to the “attitude” (more passive or active) toward affected people. When quality and attitude are combined in a 2‐D parabolic model, psychosocial support is preferably found in the middle of the attitude‐axis (high quality); extremely passive or active positions are to be avoided (low quality). Well‐timed assessments of structure, process, and outcome aspects, and associations between them, will help planners, providers, and evaluators understand if the optimum is reached, as well as provide guidance for quality improvement.