Winner of the Quality Improvement Star Award at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust
Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU)
Hawthorns 1 Ward, Basingstoke, North Hampshire
A specialist ward that provide inpatient mental health care, assessment and comprehensive treatment to individuals who are experiencing the most acutely disturbed phase of a serious mental disorder.
Our Quality Improvement lead Staff Nurse Charlotte Dodd has actively participated in the Reducing Restrictive Practice (RRP) collaborative, as part of a wider Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme (MHSIP) in partnership with the Care Quality Commission at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
The aim of the RRP is to nationally reduce restrictive practice (measured by number of restraints, seclusions and rapid tranquilisations) by 33%.
On Hawthorns 1, PICU we have trialled a large variety of PDSA cycles whilst measuring our episodes of restrictive practice. Since being involved with the MHSIP over the past 12 months there are a lot of things we are proud of, we have seen an overall reduction of 58% across our episodes of restrictive practice, and are continually introducing more PDSA cycles to improve this further.
Prior to our QI involvement our average length of stay (LOS) from November 2018 to February 2019 was 103 days, since the implementation of 'Access to PICU' in November 2019 our average LOS has reduced by 49% to an average of 53 days.
Our service users are no longer complaining of feeling bored on the ward, we have had 0 episodes of RT over the past 5 months and we have started a Twitter account @Hawthorns1PICU to share our PDSAs and successes, such as receiving GOOD from our recent CQC visit and holding our first Summer Sports Day for all our service users on the ward. They were the first ward on the collaborative to look into use of PRN benzodiazepine medication, have introduced activity coordinators, and are continually gathering feedback from staff, patients and family on ways to improve care provided.
Congratulations PICU ward - what a great example of using QI methodology and tools to reduce restrictive practice.
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