A Qualitative Investigation of the Clinician Experience of Working with Borderline Personality Disorder

The current research provided opportunity for 140 clinicians across emergency medicine and mental health service settings in Australia and New Zealand to make comment about their experiences in working with patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder BPD), in order to allow for some illustration of the difficulties found within the literature with regard to negative attitudes towards this patient group. Thematic analysis conducted on the qualitative responses revealed four key themes: 1. BPD patients generate an uncomfortable personal response in the clinicians, 2. specific characteristics of BPD that contribute to negative clinician and health service response, 3. inadequacies of the health system in addressing BPD patient needs, and 4. techniques and strategies needed to improve service provision with BPD. This investigation gives illustration to the key difficulties that clinicians have in working with patients diagnosed with BPD and suggests that interpersonal and system difficulties may have altered the provision of service that is available to this patient group.