Hi everyone,

I'm part of ateam who are starting to implement the Safewards model in West Wales on an Acute Admissions ward.

diolch!

robert

Welcome Robert!

Well here's another new by I am part of a team looking at implementing Safe Wards strategy
I have been allocated the "safe words" aspect of the model
I have been an RMN for 16 years and feel as though I am beginning to see the wheel being reinvented !
Much of what I read is what was expected of me as common sense whilst a developing nurse hence I am now puzzled as to what happened in the intervening years ?

Further to this I work in a trust that has re-introduced uniforms which seems to go in the opposite philosophical tradition of genuinely treating service users/clients as eaqual to ourselves and that we are just as likely to suffer from mental health problems as they are.
I have often found that this approach both lessens stigma and de-powers the fears that the service user has.
I note that there is frequent use of the term 'patient' again which I thought was removed from our vocabulary when I trained.
I am not doubting the validity of what has be shown to be effective here but on speaking with retired RMN's and those with 20+ years experience , they like wise are commenting as to what has happened to the quality oftraining and the selection of nursing student candidates ?

Presumably you mean soft words?

I could refer you to the youtube video of the webinar about soft words (), or I could argue that it's not common sense as using soft words during the Safewards trial did result in significant fall in conflict and containment.

Instead, as I am a researcher, I am going to suggest that you conduct the following experiments, in order:
1. Print out all the Soft Words statements without further reading, give them to a colleague, and see how many of them you can accurately describe unseen. What percentage of them do you know? [Our previous research shows that hardly anyone can describe all of them, and although everyone knows a few and considers them common sense, they are not the same ones].
2. More challenging this. Give the Soft Words statement to a colleague who has worked with you for at least six months. Ask him or her to honestly, without any blame or comeback, sort them into three piles: (a) those they see you use all the time; (b) those they have seen you use occasionally or rarely; and (c) those they have never seen you use.
3. Take a random three of your colleagues, ask them how they manage these flashpoint situations: saying no to a patient; asking a patient to do something they don't want to do; asking a patient to stop doing something they do want to do. How many of the Soft Words statements do they accurately describe each?
4. For each of your colleagues on the team, do a sort of the statements into three piles as was done for you: those they use regularly through to not at all.

Then come back here and tell us your results.

Enjoy!

Len

PS. The word patient has never gone out of fashion and is universally understood by professionals and lay people alike, even though there have been (and still are) temporary adoptions of client, service user, survivor or other terms at various times by various groups for various purposes.

The impact of uniforms can be argued either way. There is no actual evidence on whether they make conflict or containment more or less likely. Safewards is based on the evidence we have at the current time.