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 There used to be almost total consensus about the
poverty of acute in-patient stays.
'As we all know, acute units have
been starved of resources, marginalised when it comes to service
development, and then criticised for an excessively custodial form
of care.' Consultant psychiatrist quoted in The
Search for Acute Solutions (Sainsbury
Centre for Mental Health 2006).
It wasn't not so much the locked doors
(even on ostensibly ‘open wards’) that created the custodial
environment, but the culture of staff ‘watching and waiting’. This
very passive approach, combined with an almost total absence of
resources and activities for patients, produced days and weeks
characterised by boredom, frustration and lack of development, for
both patients and staff.
But acute care is changing. Very much for the
better, in terms of therapeutic input, patient involvement in their
own care, and meaningful activities. Improved staff satisfaction
and motivation is both cause and effect of these improvements.
Informed by the author's own experience of being an acute mental
health in-patient, this module looks at some of the key components
of constructive acute in-patient wards and the role of the
psychiatrist in enabling positive changes.
Start the module
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