Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

“All patients have a risk assessment completed within four hours of admission to the ward. This is monitored through the clinical dashboard daily by the Nurse in Charge. On admission the Nurse in Charge will delegate duties to ensure that all admission tasks are completed.”

“The Trust has revised line management supervision forms to include quality of record keeping, their professional responsibilities, Trust policy and values, and NMC accountability frameworks in respect of record keeping. In addition to discussions during supervision the Crisis Response and Home Treatment Service has been reminded of this in their team meetings.”

“Bespoke training on the importance of documentation is being arranged for all staff working in the urgent care pathway in April 2024.”

“The Home Treatment Team complete gate keeping assessments which provide professional opinions and rationale, including the 'purpose of admission', or a home treatment care plan as an alternative to admission. All admission requests have oversight from the Purposeful Admission Clinical Lead.”

“The Trust is currently commissioning a unified Electronic Patient Records System. This system will permit access to all of the required clinical systems and will also embed a new mechanism to ensure robust clinical information sharing.”

“The Trust's Urgent Care and Inpatient Care Unit is implementing a new initiative 'International Fundamentals of Care Framework', which is a nursing framework that supports transition and care planning based on trusting therapeutic relationship, integration of care and context of care.”

“The Home Treatment Team in Mid and South have added the framework principles to the Newman's form that is given to patients to develop and assist with their view and planning of their care and treatment needs.”

“The service manager took this recommendation on board and has been working with colleagues and departments to produce a purposeful template that will form part of the Patient Electronic Record specific to the care coordinators' handover. This document has been approved, for implementation Trust wide, following a process of consultation and with comments gathered from all community services.”

“The handover template (Care Coordinator to Care Coordinator Transfer of Care Document) will form part of the patient's electronic record and will be easily accessible to anybody working with the patient.”

“The Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) based at Grays Hall, as well as CMHT teams across the Trust have access to the Team caseloads via the Trust Intranet system”

“In the event that a new care coordinator is not available, the team ensure that those patients without an allocated care coordinator have direct contact from clinicians within the team.”

“The team manager and team leads now receive monthly performance updates with regards to the various care standards compliance which include care plan and risk assessment which are then shared with the care coordinators for action.”

“the team ensure that those patients without an allocated care coordinator have direct contact from clinicians within the team. This is done through a clinical MDT approach; patients are prioritised according to their presenting need and contact is through the use of creating from the Duty Person and Buddy worker System.”

“The Trust is currently considering the need to expand the number and types of medications available for nurses to use via PGD. In order to inform these considerations, the Trust's Director of Pharmacy and Service Managers for urgent care pathways are collaboratively reviewing the medication needs for the services.”

“Within 24 hours of admission, the Guide To Action falls assessment is completed and staff are expected to update the falls risk assessment whenever there has been a change in the patient's clinical condition.”

“The falls risk assessment is included in the local induction of all clinical ward staff band 2 to band 7 and for the induction of temporary workers. Knowledge and understanding is also reviewed in the probation period of substantive staff members through discussions, which usually concludes after the first six months of employment.”

“The SOP for falls management in the inpatient setting will guide staff through the process required when there is a concern about the risk of a fall, how to prevent a fall within the inpatient setting including specific information on expert advice from occupational therapy and physiotherapy teams, and the steps required to safeguard a patient's safety when a patient does have a fall.”

“Posters are displayed in patient bedrooms to clearly inform the patient and supporting staff of the mobility assistance they require, and includes details of aids they may require for the hearing and visual needs.”

“Falls Champions Networks were re-launched in January 2023 as part of the Trust's Physical Health Care meeting. Each ward have an identified registered member of staff who attend the meeting and feedback learning, changes in policy and practice developments in their local team.”

“EPUT's Head of Deteriorating Patient Pathways and Resuscitation Training Officer is working closely with mental health wards to facilitate drop-in 'refresher' life support training for clinical and administrative staff dealing with emergency situations. During 1 the training, the importance of calling for help as soon as possible (i.e. use of pinpoint alarm) is highlighted and discussed in detail (1a, 1b, 1c, 1d).”

“The training has been developed and has a planned roll out this month. All staff within community mental health services will be required to undertake the enhanced training and I would be happy to share the training slides with you should you like a copy for your records. This training will remain in place until the new Community Framework, setting out the new universal standards, is agreed.”