The experience of nursing staff and consumers in inpatient mental health wards is often reported as being negative. Efforts to improve culture and practice have had limited success, with ineffective leadership, staff resistance, and unresponsive organisational culture identified as common barriers to change. Practice development has been promoted as an approach to developing person-centred culture that enables professional development through participation, learning and empowerment. For person-centred practice to flourish, organisational leadership at all levels must reflect the same principles. In preparation for the opening of a new integrated mental health service, an inpatient mental health team participated in a practice development project. An action research approach was used to facilitate a series of "away days," initially with the nursing team and then other members of the multidisciplinary team (MDT). Transformational leadership principles were adopted in the facilitation of team activities underpinned by strengths and solution-focused practices. Evaluation of the project by staff members was very positive and there was a high level of participation in practice development activities. The project resulted in the creation of a development plan for the ward, which prioritised five key themes: person-centred care, personal recovery, strengths-based principles, and evidence-based and values-based care. The project outcomes highlight the importance of leadership, which parallels the ideals promoted for clinical practice.
A growing body of evidence highlights that trauma is the single most significant predictor that an individual will need support from mental health services. Yet despite this association, mental health services have been slow to provide approaches to care and treatment that deal directly with trauma. Embedding the principles of trauma-informed care and practice (TICP) in acute inpatient ward practice can lead to practice improvement and cultural change over a number of areas. The current service evaluation highlights how these principles can inform practice and the positive affect this has on areas such as seclusion and restraint, therapeutic engagement, and ward routines. TICP complements recovery-focused models of care and promotes collaborative and empowering relationships in the inpatient setting. Embedding this approach in inpatient mental health units can lead to changes in professional practice and service provision that benefit service users. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 55(10), 34-38.].
A multispectral image camera captures image data within specific wavelength ranges in narrow wavelength bands across the electromagnetic spectrum. Images from a multispectral camera can extract additional information that the human eye or a normal camera fails to capture and thus may have important applications in precision agriculture, forestry, medicine and object identification. Conventional multispectral cameras are made up of multiple image sensors each fitted with a narrow passband wavelength filter and optics, which makes them heavy, bulky, power hungry and very expensive. The multiple optics also create image co-registration problem. Here, we demonstrate a single sensor based three band multispectral camera using a narrow spectral band RGB colour mosaic in a Bayer pattern integrated on a monochrome CMOS sensor. The narrow band colour mosaic is made of a hybrid combination of plasmonic colour filters and heterostructured dielectric multilayer. The demonstrated camera technology has reduced cost, weight, size and power by almost n times (where n is the number of bands) compared to a conventional multispectral camera.
Administration of p.r.n. (pro re nata) medication is a typical practice in acute inpatient mental health units. Although guided by the prescription, the administration of p.r.n. medication is a relatively autonomous component of the nurse's role, and the decision to administer is generally one for the nurse. During a number of facilitated planning days at the authors' facility, nurses indicated that the practice associated with administration of psychotropic p.r.n. medications in an acute inpatient mental health unit required clearer articulation. Against this background, the authors conducted a review of the literature, with two objectives: to identify and then communicate to the nurses the best evidence to support nursing practice. The authors found considerable variation in nursing practices related to administration of p.r.n. medication. In an area of practice that is undertaken with such regularity and with considerable potential impact on consumers, these findings point to the need for further research to establish best practices.
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