'How safe is our care?'

We help the Health Foundation answer the question ‘How safe is our care?’ by discussing our DASA framework for measuring and monitoring instances of patient aggression, to improve patient and staff safety and bring about constructive change.

Mark Thorpe, Project Lead at the Centre for Perfect Care and Dr Panchu Xavier, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at Mersey Care have recently been doing some national work with the Health Foundations “How safe is our Care” program, which comprises of a number of national improvement bodies throughout the UK.

Mersey Care's (Centre of Perfect Care) Measuring, Monitoring and safety framework (MMSF) project was a successful outcome from this and one in which the improvement bodies and the Health Foundation wanted to capture, requesting further support from the Centre for Perfect Care team. Who were able to demonstrate how using the MMSF effectively can have a significant impact on improving safety. For example in the case of the DASA (Dynamic appraisal of Situational Aggression) program; how implementing training can help staff deal with and reduce instances of patient aggression.

Our involvement in the “How safe is our care” program, has helped to expand other organisations learning and we were able to demonstrate the positives and skills of working within Mersey Care and the Centre of Perfect Care.

To find out more about DASA (which comes under the NFF guide for reducing restrictive practice) and the success of the training to date, please see our poster HERE.

You can also see overall feedback from staff who undertook the DASA training HERE.