S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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residential and clinical placement components. It is not clear whether the components required consecutive days of attendance as ‘overall, the program was of 15 weeks’ duration’ (Aoun & Johnson, 2002). Again, except Aoun and Johnson (2002) all courses were held regionally or by distance education. This may be explained by the difficulty of staff having time away from small rural and remote health centres and the associated difficulty in ‘back filling’ absences due to limited staff numbers. The authors feel comfortable in suggesting that another reason for regional workshops is the vast distances involved and scattered nature of the participants mandating this as the only logistically viable approach. 3.2.6.2.3 Status of instructors/facilitators It is difficult to ascertain whether mental health nurses were the predominate facilitators in the non-alcohol related training. The multiple specialties of the facilitators in Chur-Hansen et al. (2004) combined with the total absence of nurse facilitators, could be explained by the inclusion of rural and remote GPs, being funded predominantly by medical specialist organisations and the content targeted to psychiatry (as opposed to mental health). This assertion is further corroborated in the content being medically focused as opposed to nursing intervention-focused. Aoun and Johnson (2002) referred to ‘tutors with extensive mental health experience’, Chang et al. (2002) ‘staff’ and Ellis and Philip (2010) referred to ‘local mental health staff’. The two alcohol-related articles (Kennedy et al., 2013; Mellor et al., 2012) identified nurses who were specifically-trained in the treatment and management of alcohol misuse.

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