21 June 2024

Two CNWL quality improvement projects and their learnings have won awards at the 2024 Bristol Patient Safety Conference.

The projects presented were:

  • Reducing the use of seclusion in an inpatient mental health setting (presented by Dr Mark Brewerton)
  • Development of an Integrated Electronic Platform for ADHD Medication Initiation in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (presented by Dr Noah Stanton)

As part of the project, CNWL identified high and increasing rates in one of its hospitals (through regular audits). Its aim was to reduce the use of, and time spent in, seclusion in an inpatient mental health setting. These episodes of seclusions were often repeated and lengthy incidents with individual service users. 

Using data, they identified which teams had a higher use of seclusion and selected nine teams to form an improvement collaborative. The collaborative was to reduce the use of seclusion rates in all nine teams by 50%, and if seclusion was used, reduce the average time spent in seclusion by December 2023.  See the poster for more information and the final results.

Reducing the use of seclusion in an inpatient mental health setting poster.png

 

Dr Noah Stanton and his team’s quality improvement project involved a number of things, including:

  • Developing an electronic platform (e-platform) to educate parents about medication for ADHD
  • Wanting to reduce waiting times and the time to treatment by 10%.
  • They also wanted to increase the proportion of patients with ADHD initiated on medication (when appropriate) by 10%.

The e-platform includes psychoeducation videos featuring neurodevelopmental clinicians, as well as additional question-and-answer sections, useful websites and an e-form where parents can indicate their choice to start medication. See the poster for more information, the final results and next steps.

Development of an Integrated Electronic Platform for ADHD Medication Initiation in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.png

If you or somebody you know has presented a QI project locally, regionally, nationally or even internationally, let’s celebrate this with an improvement story! Get in touch with the QI team today cnw-tr.improvementsupport@nhs.net where we can share this with colleagues across the Trust.