An Ecological Validation of Nurse Training in Behaviour Therapy

Abstract

Behavioural ecology is a perspective within applied behaviour analysis which focuses on the complex relationship between interacting parts of a system, and particularly on the untargeted “side-effects” of interventions. This article considers two ecological effects of a large-scale nurse training venture in which 65 qualified psychiatric nurses received a one week in-service training in behaviour therapy. The effects of this training on two untargeted parameters, the nurses' clinical case notes (response generalization; N = 73) and ward teaching (generalization across subjects; N = 50) were evaluated via a combination of time-series and control group designs. The results indicated that the case notes became significantly more descriptive and less subjective, and that the learners developed significantly superior skills and knowledge in behaviour therapy as a consequence of the in-service training. These findings are discussed in terms of nurse training and behavioural ecology. The implication is that evaluations to date have generally been ecologically invalid, and that research on this topic would benefit from a more complex, naturalistic perspective.