The Quality Network for Inpatient Working Age Mental Health Services (QNWA) have recently published guidance that outlines the standards most commonly ‘unmet’ by member wards. It also provides an overview of the importance of these standards and how wards can best evidence them. This guidance is the first of its kind produced by a CCQI Network.
Following the publication of QNWA’s first Thematic Report, the project team wished to develop a supplementary document that would help support wards through their accreditation and developmental cycles. The aims of the document were two-fold:
- To outline why these standards are important so services make it a matter of priority to meet them;
- And to provide clear and standardised examples of how wards can best evidence these standards at the point of their peer reviews in order to reduce the number of unmet standards being taken to the Accreditation Committee.
The document utilised aggregated data from the 44 wards who were peer-reviewed against the 6th Edition QNWA standards between 2017-2019. From this, ten standards were selected for inclusion. These standards cover various aspects of care provision, from environmental risk to policies and handovers.
QNWA also wished to create this guidance with the input of our patient and carer representatives so that the importance of the standards was emphasised not only from an evidence-based perspective, but from the perspective of those who use these services.
We hope that member wards will find this guidance a useful tool that will help guide them through the QNWA accreditation or developmental processes.
We’d also like to thank all the wards and patient and carer representatives for being involved in the creation of this document.