Cognitive behavioural therapy for eating disorders: how do clinician characteristics impact on treatment fidelity?

Background: Clinicians routinely report not practising evidence-based treatments with eating disorders. There has been limited research investigating the impact of adaptable clinician characteristics such as self-efficacy and therapeutic optimism in this area. This study evaluated if there is a relationship between clinician therapeutic optimism, self-efficacy and the provision of evidence-based practice in the treatment of bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Method: A survey developed for this study was administered to 100 psychologists who were recruited online via a range of organisations affiliated with psychology and/or eating disorders. The survey measured demographic factors, eating disorder treatment knowledge, treatment fidelity, the use of individual treatment components and a range of clinician characteristics including self-efficacy and therapeutic optimism.

Results: Results demonstrated that clinician self-efficacy was positively associated with and predicted treatment fidelity. Therapeutic optimism had significant low correlations with treatment fidelity but did not predict treatment fidelity.

Conclusion: These findings would suggest that strengthening clinician self-efficacy is useful in improving evidence-based practice in the treatment of binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa and may also have implications in the training of clinicians. The study also demonstrated that the use of a range of knowledge translation strategies are valuable in enhancing clinician adherence to evidence-based practice. Further research with direct measures of treatment fidelity is needed to clarify these findings.