Although long a feature of inpatient mental health ward routine, community meetings have not always attracted a clear sense of purpose and value. A common complaint from patients is that community meetings are useless and have no worthwhile purpose. It was thought that staff on acute wards would benefit from having a space to think about community meetings, and a work discussion group was provided over a duration of 18 months. It was hoped that this intervention would enable facilitators to think about these meetings and about their aims and benefits. This paper presents findings from the work discussion group: staff facilitators' experience of facilitating community meetings and patients' direct feedback to facilitators about their experience of these meetings. The conclusions made are that community meetings could provide a useful forum for patients and staff if they: • are of benefit to patients • provide a forum for development of the therapeutic alliance between patients and staff • contribute towards improvement of the ward milieu • provide a forum for staff to develop therapeutic skills • provide a forum for staff to develop working relationships with colleagues and different professionals in the team.
This service evaluation study aimed to demonstrate the impact of implementing ward‐based multidisciplinary therapy input on an acute psychiatric ward in a London hospital for a six‐month period. The results indicated a high level of patient engagement with the project and referrals facilitated for patients following discharge. A reduction of incidents on the ward was reported over the project period compared to the previous year and there was less use of containment measures by staff by the end of the project. Recommendations are made for service improvement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.