University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) has launched a new service, aimed at supporting staff caring for patients with mental health needs.

The Mental Health Liaison Team, which is based on the Clinical Decisions Unit (CDU) at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, was created due to a perceived gap in mental health services to support the needs of patients and staff in improving the delivery of holistic care.

In 2017, senior management recognised the need to employ an experienced mental health nurse to support patients admitted to the unit with acute mental health problems.

The National Confidentiality Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) highlighted the quality of physical and mental health care for patients aged 18 and over with a significant mental disorder who are admitted to a general hospital. The report takes a critical look at areas where patient care could have been improved. It showed that the integration of all healthcare professionals to provide care as needed for each patient is a crucial part of providing a higher quality of care to all patients. The report highlighted:

• 11% of general hospitals had shared/complete access to mental health records
• 11% had no basic training in mental health awareness
• 19% had no training in managing violence and aggression
• 21% of patients did not have their mental health history recorded on admission
• 38% had no training in dealing with patients who self-harmed
• 41% had no training in undertaking a risk assessment
• 46% of hospitals provided basic mandatory training in mental healthcare

The primary roles of the team are to teach, train and support other CDU staff and improve their confidence as well as challenging mental health stigma and giving advice on the Mental Health Act. The team runs reflective practice groups weekly for staff. The service aims to improve the quality of holistic care and patient experience and aims to move towards achieving recommendation from the NCEPOD guidelines for mental health.

The team, comprised of mental health liaison nurses Susan Nevitt and Mark McGinley, has a combined 75 years of experience in nursing at a senior level in liaison psychiatry. 90% of staff felt that the Mental Health Liaison Team was beneficial to patient care and 70% felt that it had improved their confidence and skills in caring for patients with complex mental health problems.

Susan said: “Prior to this service on the CDU, there was no clear strategy to improve the skills and training for staff in caring for patients on with mental health problems on the CDU.

“Staff felt ill-equipped and lacked confidence to deal with complex situations, all of which can contribute to workplace stress and sick leave. “

Estimates from Public Health England (PHE) put the cost of NHS staff absence, due to poor health, at £2.4bn a year and say 12.5 million work days were lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2016/17.