A ‘paradigm shift’ in inpatient care

During it, Dave Riley, mental health nurse, and Quality Improvement Partner for Perfect Care at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, described the Trust’s award-winning ‘No Force First’ approach.

This conference session –entitled ‘Safe in seclusion? Examining seclusion use and design in contemporary care’ –was introduced by Paula Reavey, Professor of Psychology & Mental Health at London South Bank University, who is also director of the Design in Mental Health Network’s Research and Education stream, and the coauthor of a number of DiMHN publications. Later in the session, the Professor spoke jointly with Dr Hamid Alhaj, a consultant psychiatrist and director of Medical Education at the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care & Low Secure Units (NAPICU), about an ongoing joint DiMHN and NAPICU study on the impact that the physical ward environment, and different ‘environmental’ factors, can have in reducing the use of restraint and seclusion (The Network– July 2019). 

However, Professor Reavey’s initial task was to introduce the session’s first speaker, Dave Riley, from Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, a mental health nurse who has spent the past six years working with clinical teams at the organisation to reduce the use of physical interventions when people become distressed on inpatient units. The programme he is involved in, ‘No Force First’, has won a number of national awards in the UK – most recently a 2019 Patient Safety Award for Culture Change – and been recognised as a key driver for change.