Imagine you're on an aeroplane...

I recently had a long conversation with the mother of a service user as part of a complaints investigation. The mother had made a complaint about the lack of information and explanation she had been given when her son was admitted to the Trust Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).

She told me that her son had not previously been involved with mental health services and consequently it was the first time she had been on a psychiatric ward.  We had a long conversation about communication and how strange and ‘different’ the PICU had seemed to someone who had never been on a mental health ward before.

The complainant said it had felt a bit like being on a plane; the cabin crew and pilot fly every day and know exactly what to expect but for the passengers it feels much more like going into the unknown. That made me see the ward environment through different eyes and appreciate fully how difficult the experience must have been.

Following the complaint the Ward Manager has identified three nurses on the ward to be ‘champions’.  They will introduce themselves to relatives and carers when a loved one is admitted and go through the carers pack with them. Instead of making the (unconscious) assumption that relatives understand how the ward operates all staff will be asked to assume that this is not the case and to think about how they explain what they are doing in a way that makes sense. These staff will also make sure they are accessible to relatives if they have further questions and will continue to provide support and explanation throughout the stay on the ward.

Although the PICU environment is different from Adult Acute Admission wards this change in practice could apply to those areas too. To those that work in mental health the ward environment is normal and familiar so maybe the answer is for our staff to imagine it as an aeroplane or a submarine in order to see it through different eyes.