Safety care bundles to inpatient mental health wards Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board

The Cardiff and Vale University Health Board project team using a series of plan, do, study, act cycles to test new tools and working practices designed to reduce violent behaviour. The team also introduced a ‘safety cross’ for staff to record violent incidents.

After the first two months, the team had developed and refined the:

• patient assessment process and supporting tools
• a staff training package
• a ward dashboard for reporting performance.

Outcomes

Staff interviews, patient feedback and compliance with the ward dashboard indicated that the intervention was feasible and acceptable to staff. 

The initial evaluation did not find a link between the intervention and sickness or violent incidents and the team felt it unlikely that a direct association would be established following more detailed examination, due to the complex relationships between the different factors involved. 

However, an association with reduced staff sickness was found for the ward which had the most complete information for before and after the intervention. Before the intervention period, the aggregate sickness rate was 9.28% of full time staff. This fell to 6.79% following the intervention period. If these results were replicated across other wards, the cost saving for the unit could be £69,318.

The project increased the capacity of individuals within the service to collect, analyse and interpret data, which will help with the designing of future improvements and projects.