Improving therapeutic engagement and observations on inpatient mental health wards in the English National Health Service: lessons from using quality improvement to scale up interventions.

backgroundObservations on mental health inpatient wards account for a large amount of staff time and cost to organisations. Ideally, observations should support meaningful engagement between staff and service users on wards, benefiting both the recovery of service users and the well-being of staff. However, observation practice is varied, and the therapeutic benefit it brings is questioned in some instances.

methodsOver 18 months, 55 inpatient mental health wards across one English National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust employed Quality Improvement (QI) methodology to test interventions aimed at improving observation completion and therapeutic engagement. A standard framework for scaling up was used to sequence the work and support moving from testing a large number of interventions locally to scaling three across the organisation. The three interventions were a board relay, zonal observations, and the use of life skills recovery workers to lead activities. Measures used included general and intermittent observation completion, incidents of violence and agression (physical, verbal and racial), restrictive practice (prone restraint, restraint, seclusion, and rapid tranquillisation), and staff sickness.

resultsSustained improvements were seen in all 10 measures used in this work, as evidenced by shifts in statistical process control charts. General observation completion increased by 1.2%, and intermittent observation completion rose by 1.9%. Incidents of physical violence were reduced by 23%, verbal aggression by 38% and racial aggression by 60. Restrictive practice use also reduced, with restraint reduced by 16%, prone restraint by 35%, seclusion by 38%, and rapid tranquillisation by 26%. Staff sickness also decreased by 16%.

conclusionObservation completion and therapeutic engagement have been shown to improve with zonal observations, a board relay, and life skills activities led by recovery workers. QI can be used to test and scale interventions rapidly across a system.