#WardSonar:real-time measure of safety for mental health wards PILOT
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing a service user centred co-designed patient safety intervention for acute mental health wards: A mixed methods process evaluation. PILOT STUDY
IRAS ID
294467
Contact name
John Baker
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 2 months, 31 days
Research summary
Acute mental health wards are not safe places. This project will develop and test a system to measure how safe service users on mental health wards are feeling in real-time, and make this information available to ward staff to help them manage safety. The measure will be designed with service users and staff and then tested on wards.
Where safety data is currently collected (e.g. about incidents), it is collected afterwards and service users’ viewpoints are rarely included. Research has shown patients are happy to report safety issues in general hospitals but this has
not been tried on mental health wards. The project will have three phases. Phase 1 will develop the service user measure. Firstly, we will review the evidence
about collecting safety data from people in hospitals and carry out interviews with service users and staff (Phase 1a).
Secondly, due to Covid 19 restrictions placing Phase 1a at risk, we will recruit staff for interviews via networks on social media (Phase 1b). Thirdly, we will hold workshops with service users and staff to co-design the system (Phase 1c). In Phase 2 we will carry out small-scale testing on two wards for eight weeks and then modify the system if required.
Phase 3 will be an in-depth study for nine months on six wards. We will collect data from the system and the wards, interview staff and service users about how they have found using the system, and we will observe how staff use the
information. This will tell us how useful the system is and if it shows promise it will be used to inform the design of a randomised controlled trial.
This application relates to Phase 2, a pilot study to test the device we have co-designed.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/EM/0124
Date of REC Opinion
1 Jun 2021
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion