Research Updates – W/C 25/04/2022

Digital Inclusions to Prevent Drug-Related Deaths: Scoping user needs

Digital Lifelines Scotland seeks to help overcome digital exclusion and design new digital solutions that better meet people’s needs and improve the health outcomes for people who use drugs, reducing the risk of harm and death. As a Digital Lifelines partner, DRNS gathered the experiences and views of people who use drugs and those who support them about their use of digital technology, the challenges and barriers they face, and the support they would like. Access a summary of the findings here or email nss.digitallifelines@nhs.scot to be sent the full report.

Alcohol and Drugs Workforce: Mixed-methods research compendium

Researchers from the Scottish Government have recently completed a large programme of mixed-methods research around the workforce in Scotland’s alcohol and drug services. The research included synthesising existing datasets and generating new data which has helped to formulate considerations for how the qualitative and quantitative evidence arising from this research might be used to inform policy development as well as service design in the future. Researchers will be presenting on this work at the DRNS Conference. Access the full summary report here.

Stress and Wellbeing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A mixed-methods exploration of frontline homelessness service staff experiences in Scotland

This newly published paper explores the experiences of stress and wellbeing among those working in frontline homelessness service roles during the early stages of the pandemic in Scotland. Findings include:

• For some, the pandemic brought teams and staff closer together, for others it led to fragmentation and frustration
• Quantitative data suggested that participants were not experiencing burnout, although some were at heightened risk

Read the full paper here.