Face to face, person to person: Skills and attributes deployed by rural mental health clinicians when engaging with consumers.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify the skills and attributes deployed by rural mental health clinicians when engaging with consumers in the community mental health context.

Design: Reflecting the exploratory nature of this research, a semi-structured focus group was conducted.

Setting: One community mental health service in regional South Australia (catchment area = approximately 60 000 people).

Engaging consumers in the Australian emergency mental health context: a qualitative perspective from clinicians working in the community.

Successfully engaging with consumers is seen as an essential component of mental healthcare, yet doing so can be challenging and little is understood about the unique engagement skills and attributes employed by mental health clinicians working in the emergency community context. Consequently, this qualitative study explored the engagement experiences of clinicians to identify the attributes used when engaging with consumers in this unique setting. We conducted two semi-structured focus groups in July and August 2011 with 16 clinicians employed at one metropolitan mental health organisation in South Australia.