The Trust has been shortlisted for this year’s Nursing Times Awards, which recognise the contributions of nursing colleagues across the healthcare system.
The project, ‘Improving Observations and Therapeutic Engagement on Mental Health Inpatient Wards’, has been shortlisted in the Patient Safety Improvement category.
From 2022 to 2024, the Trust used quality improvement (QI) in all its 52 inpatient mental health wards to enhance the ways in which it engages with and observes service users.
QI is a methodology used across the Trust to tackle complex health needs where an answer is not fully known. The approach brings together subject experts, such as staff and service users, to identify and test possible solutions.
In this project, staff and service users alike worked together to produce local projects across their wards in order to better understand the issue, develop ideas and then test them on a small scale.
Suggested testing included:
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Handing over observation boards between staff.
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Dividing wards into zones, where staff are allocated to engage with service users.
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Hiring staff focusing on therapeutic relationships with service users during twilight shifts.
Testing to date has found that there have been noticeable improvements across the Trust in terms of completed observations, reductions in several types of violence and in restrictive practice.
The work will be presented to a panel of judges in September, and the winners will be announced at the Nursing Times Awards on Wednesday, 23rd October.