The quest for National Minimum Standards around physical interventions is the Holy Grail of the social care and health world.
Personally I am in favour of having national minimum standards. It would allow for greater consistency in the use of physical interventions and improve the monitoring and quality assurance process. For this reason I was pleased to be asked to sit on a Royal College of Nursing Expert Reference Group on physical intervention guidance along with a wide range of stakeholders including Mind, the Department of Health, BILD and Keele University.
What quickly became apparent from the first meeting was the sheer amount of work that is currently going on in this subject area at the moment. The aim of the group is to review and try to bring together the thinking behind guidance that is being carried out independently by NHS Protect, NICE, NHS England, RCP, CQC to name a few.
The idea of whether restraint should be banned came up as an interesting discussion point and largely mirrored the debate we had locally at the beginning of the year at our Midlands Physical Intervention Conference. The feeling then and, again at the Expert Reference Group, is that we can’t stop the challenging behaviour that often occurs in mental health settings but what we can do is ensure staff are properly trained to deal with issues in the safest way possible.
One of the things we will be looking to agree on at the next meeting is agreeing on the definition of restraint the group will be working towards. I will update you all on the situation in blogs.
Blogged by Gary Firkins –
De-escalation, Management and Intervention Lead for South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Personally I am in favour of having national minimum standards. It would allow for greater consistency in the use of physical interventions and improve the monitoring and quality assurance process. For this reason I was pleased to be asked to sit on a Royal College of Nursing Expert Reference Group on physical intervention guidance along with a wide range of stakeholders including Mind, the Department of Health, BILD and Keele University.
What quickly became apparent from the first meeting was the sheer amount of work that is currently going on in this subject area at the moment. The aim of the group is to review and try to bring together the thinking behind guidance that is being carried out independently by NHS Protect, NICE, NHS England, RCP, CQC to name a few.
The idea of whether restraint should be banned came up as an interesting discussion point and largely mirrored the debate we had locally at the beginning of the year at our Midlands Physical Intervention Conference. The feeling then and, again at the Expert Reference Group, is that we can’t stop the challenging behaviour that often occurs in mental health settings but what we can do is ensure staff are properly trained to deal with issues in the safest way possible.
One of the things we will be looking to agree on at the next meeting is agreeing on the definition of restraint the group will be working towards. I will update you all on the situation in blogs.
Blogged by Gary Firkins –
De-escalation, Management and Intervention Lead for South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust