Article Text
Abstract
Objectives The aim of the current study is to explore how therapists running a guided physical exercise and dietary therapy programme (PED-t) experience their contribution to the treatment of patients with bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.
Methods Ten therapists running the PED-t were semistructurally interviewed and the transcribed interviews were analysed using a systematic text condensation approach.
Setting The study was run within the context of a randomised controlled trial at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
Results The therapists experienced their knowledge about physical exercise and nutrition as important and useful, and that they could share their knowledge with the patients in different ways and with confidence in their own role. They also believed that their knowledge could serve as tools for the patients’ post-treatment recovery and management of their daily lives. Moreover, the therapists put much effort in adjusting their teaching to fit each individual participant. Finally, they reported their personal qualities as important to build trust and therapeutic alliance.
Conclusions The terms ‘clinical confidence’ and ‘alliance’ may stand out as the overarching ‘metacategories’ covering the experiences revealed in this study. The clinical implication is that new groups of professionals may have an important role in the treatment of eating disorders.
Trial registration number NCTO2079935; Results.
- mental health
- eating disorders
- qualitative research
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Footnotes
Contributors MB, RW, JHR, GP and JS-B were all responsible for the planning of the study. MB collected and analysed the data, and the results were validated by GP, RW and JHR. All authors, MB, RW, AVS, RW, JHR, GP and JS-B, contributed in finalising the manuscript.
Funding The publication charges for this article have been funded by a grant from the publication fund of University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway.
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval The study was approved by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics identifier 2013/1871 on 23 October 2013 and prospectively registered in ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02079935 on 17 February 2014.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement No additional data are available.