[Training of healthcare professionals in clinical hypnosis: A qualitative study]. / Étude qualitative de l'expérience de la formation en hypnose clinique pour les professionnels de santé.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Training in clinical hypnosis leads to important transformations in healthcare professionals, in their professional practices as well as in their personal lives. The objective of this study was to explore how health professionals experience the transformations that result from such a training. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews with health professionals from France and Europe were conducted. The qualitative method used was Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Purposive sampling required to include participants from different professions, experience and regions of origin. They had already completed training in clinical hypnosis at different teaching institutions. RESULTS: Ten participants were included. The analysis showed four meta-themes of experience. First, it revealed participants' motivations for training in clinical hypnosis as one's desire to improve one's practice, leading to extraordinary discoveries, at a particular timing in their life. Second, participants described that hypnosis sometimes set the ground for a relationship verging on the more "intimate", therefore requiring greater caution so as not to disrupt the patient/healthcare professional relationship. Third, some participants experienced unforeseen personal fulfilment, better self-regulation of emotions and improved quality of life as well as greater comfort at the workplace. Finally, this study shed light on two limitations of training in clinical hypnosis as it can sometimes generate stress for the participants and/or result in bring about potential harmful effects one of the risks being that the trainer might cross some ethical lines. DISCUSSION: The level of personal change experienced by the participants is similar to some changes induced by personal psychotherapy. For several participants, issues of power and vulnerability in the relationship using hypnosis were associated with a feeling of instability during the training. In hypnosis, the management of an asymmetrical relationship involves a two-way risk vulnerability of the hypnotized person to the all-powerful relationship of their therapist as well as destabilization of therapists by the reduction of power asymmetry during hypnotic work with their patients.