I spent the day presenting Safewards to staff of 3 wards in South London and Maudsley.
One of the wards, Acorn Lodge, is a unit in the Bethlem that cares for children aged 4 – 12. The staff were a good mixture of OT’s and nurses. They have taken the model and interventions away to have a good think, but are also planning to introduce Talk Down and Discharge Messages.
The staff are also begining to look at Talk Down and seeing if there needs to be any adaptation to the intervention. One issue straight away is that “Respect and Empathy” section contains the advice: “Don’t mock patients or treat them as a child”, which will obviously need changing!
The staff also had some brilliant ideas about including families, such as making a Discharge Message tree for their on-site family flat and perhaps using Talk Down as a possible teaching aid for families.
I really hope that we get some buy in from other such units as the staff experience and ground floor knowledge is invaluable in seeing what needs to be tweaked to suite specialist need.
Geoff Brennan
Geoff@starwards.org.uk
