Clinicians’ perspectives on interventions with recidivist drink drivers

Abstract

The major objective of this study was to understand what specific knowledge exists among a sample of clinicians who work in three different alcohol and drug treatment settings in New Zealand concerning intervening with recidivist drink drive clients. Recidivist offending is currently an area of huge public concern in Aotearoa-New Zealand and indeed many other countries. Research shows that recidivist drink drivers are not a heterogeneous group (Siskind, Sheehan, Schonfeld & Ferguson, 2000). Clinically relevant distinct characteristics differentiate this hardcore sub-group of drink drive offenders not only from within drink-drive offenders, but also the general population (Pratt, Holsinger & Latessa, 2000). The importance of clinicians working effectively with strategies that are relevant to current best practice is paramount. This research implemented face-to-face interviews with 15 clinicians from three different treatment settings to examine what strategies and interventions they were aware of, what strategies were used in their current organisation and any improvements clinicians’ considered useful for intervention with recidivist drink drivers. A participatory qualitative approach was used gathering information from participants in face to face interviews. This information was useful in many ways firstly it allowed an insight into what clinicians’ know and secondly clinicians are in a unique position because it is their knowledge and expertise that contributes first hand to directly change drink drive offenders’ behaviour through a treatment programme. International research has a growing body of evidence regarding the improved effectiveness of interventions when they primarily focus on recidivist drink drivers, a trend not yet following strongly in New Zealand settings. In this study knowledge obtained from clinicians’ working at the three settings was pooled into one anonymous data source with the main findings showing the variations in knowledge and highlighting areas that need to be addressed at an organisational, educational or training level if we are to enable health professionals to reduce recidivist drink drive offending rates in our treatment settings. This study offers valuable insight and a sharing of knowledge to those who read it and also understand that if we are to have effective outcomes with this often hard to reach group, we must strive towards the Japanese principle of “Kaizen” or continuous improvement.