Minutes of Inpatient Care Forum Monday Dec 14th, 2009 

Present:

Paul Roberts, Maureen Smokjis, Joanne Barber, Gordon Parsons, Adrian Fisher

Apologies:

Janie Greville, Stephen Jeffreys, Alex Davis 

Anonymizing of Minutes:

The Group agreed they wished to continue not to anonymize minutes 

Heritage Lottery Funding:

Maureen and Ann Davis have agreed preliminary application for ‘Memories From The Asylum’. Once approved the formal bid will go in after Maureen has run it past group. Decision should be made within 10 weeks. It is hoped to make a start in April.

Project will require a paid leader plus paid assistant plus paid volunteers. It will require a paid steering committee which will be drawn from this group initially. Volunteers will be paid to train up in producing Digital Stories (Aural Histories) and Accessing Archives Research (Birmingham Central Library). A transcriber will be also required of taped interviews with service users, carers, nurses and doctors who will be advertised for.

Envisaged project will last two years and will end with exhibition at CEIMH and Birmingam City Libraries. 

Spirituality:

Bid for funding for Spirituality project from NHS ‘Research For Patients’ Benefit’ was unsuccessful but came close. Jo & team may apply again after  more pilot studies.

Spirituality Intervention project’s continuance in doubt as a result of illness of Head of Spiritual Care, Sandra Thomas and it is not clear when she will resume work. Her assistant Maggie on a temporary contract could lose her post in December if not renewed. Jo has acquired a lot of statistical info re. benefits of trial project to present to Peter Lewis, BSMHFT Medical Director, next week to re-enforce her case for its continuance. As a result Spiritual Training in BSMHFT on hold. The Spiritual Handbook which Jo put together is about to be printed. 
 

Advocacy Mapping:

Alex not available so no discussion on his idea of mapping of Advocacy Services* in region by Suresearch. Alison Tingle of Dept of Health has invited SS members to be involved in commissioning of  organisation to evaluate advocacy services nationally. 

 

Dementia Project:

Jo explained  how she plans to evaluate the positive effects of a Musical Intervention on the psychological Wellbeing of patients suffering with Advanced Dementia.

First she presented ‘Estimating Psychological Wellbeing from Behavioral Cues’ as a way of testing measures. Using a combination of facial and verbal expressions, vocalisation and motor behaviour four concepts will be looked at: Engagement, Happiness, Distress and Anger, broadly covering Interreactional behaviours and Wellbeing. All four of these variables will be scored over 5 minutes of observation backed up by video recordings. Observations will be made before, during and after the Musical Intervention (Jo’s violin playing) and recorded on ‘Form for recording well-being for short musical intervention’. There is also a column for recording ‘Qualitative Comments including self-reporting’ for those able to do so. It will be interesting to see wether qualitative observations and self-report correlate.  No more than 5 people will be involved at any one time. Before Jo plays she will greet the group and afterwards she will say goodbye and observe how meaningful their reaction is. Someone from BSMHFT’s Research & Design Team will act as independent observer.

There will be a pilot study of method. Selection of clients will fit into diagnostic category of advanced dementia (mental score of less than 5). Some patients are disruptive and will limit extent of study.

Finally Jo presented a ‘Flow Chart For Music and Dementia Project’-a summary of the process of how it will work. It would be interesting to test different aspects of intervention-would talking (social intereaction) be as meaningful as music and also the difference of effect between live and recorded music.

For the future it would be of value to show how music affects brain chemistry in Dementia patients for the better. Also would tailoring of music create optimum results? Selection of music could be personalised based on family & carers input. Currently no music is played for example before patients going to bed in care home.

As no costs are involved the project which has the approval of Paul McDonald of BSMHFT will continue unobstructed. 

Continuity Of Care Inpatient/Outpatient Consultation :

Jo has reported the results of Suresearch meeting poll to Peter Lewis. He has accepted it is unrealistic for CPNs to attend every meeting client in crisis involved in ie ward round in hospital. More consultants need to used in hospital not junior doctors. Out patient doctors will liase with CPNs. 

Preceptorship Workshops on Multi Disciplinary Working:

Maureen will run this again in January( Tues 5th/ Thurs 14th) this time on two mornings so halving number of student MH nurses per session. Paul and Janie have agreed to be involved, relating their experiences of a pre-discharge meeting to thereflective-practice focus groups with about 12 in each group. Maureen and Caroline will lead each group. 

Date of Next Meeting: 

Wednesday January 27th, 2010 10-12 am at CEIMH 

*Click here to see a copy of the proposal.

Edited by DAB-P (1st February 2010)