Taking the right steps to protect patients and staff

Karen Byard began by explaining that, as fire officer at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, her responsibilities include undertaking and monitoring fire risk assessments, liaising with the local fire service, determining what fire protection should be fitted to new or refurbished buildings, and training staff to ensure that they have an understanding of what fire protection measures are in place where she works. Her particular interests are fire doors, passive fire protection, and compliance. She said: “Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust is a mental health and community Trust in Bradford, which also covers other sites in the area. Today I will discuss some of the issues we have experienced, and what innovations, fire protection, and fire safety initiatives, we have introduced. The Trust is responsible for buildings and staff in Bradford, Airedale, and Wakefield, with two sites that incorporate wards housing some 200 inpatients. We also have a large number of owned or leased properties that community staff deliver services from, which present their own fire safety challenges.”

Karen Byard explained that she has a Masters Degree in Healthcare Fire Safety Management, and wrote her dissertation on ‘Fire doors’. She is also a qualified fire door assessor and an Authorising Engineer for Fire, and the Trust has BAFE accreditation for risk assessments. She told the conference: “Fires do happen in the NHS and in mental health”, reinforcing the point by showing slides of the damage caused by fires across the country, where the environment was damaged, but fortunately there were no injuries. She said: “In the incidents we have had in our Trust premises the fire safety and containment measures have done what they were intended to do. Just because we have fires, however,” she continued, “doesn’t mean that it needs to compromise the healing environment.”

She next showed slides of one of the Trust’s Dementia ward, which has been open for about two years, and incorporates a high level of fire safety features. The quality of the ward environment resulted in the Trust receiving a Gold Award for Dementia Design from the Dementia Services Development Centre in Stirling. Karen Byard said: “This was a fantastic achievement, and from a fire safety perspective, a high level of fire safety features was incorporated into the design. We have pagers on the ward, so that if the fire alarm activates, the staff get the location via their pager, without the need for sounders, and can move the service-users to the designated safe area without them realising anything is happening, or being distressed by the noise. This has a huge impact on the calmness on the ward if we have an incident.”