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Safewards and what it has to offer psychiatric care

Psychiatric wards are not all the same. Some experience ten times more adverse incidents, violence, self-harm etc., than others. It is possible to have two wards at the same hospital, situated next door to one another, with one being very disturbed and the other being very quiet, yet both serving the same function and taking the same sorts of patients. The Safewards Model explains how this can happen, and what we can do to help all our wards become quieter, calmer, more peaceful and safer places – for the patients and the staff. Interventions derived from the Safewards Model have been shown to work in a strictly randomised controlled trial – the gold standard of research evidence. In this presentation the model and the evidence behind it will be described. Safewards has now been implemented in many places internationally, and is backed by a range of social media and online resources. The dissemination strategy and success will also be described, as will the consumer involvement that has accompanied the research programme from the beginning.

Biography

Len Bowers is a qualified psychiatric nurse with clinical and managerial experience in acute inpatient and community care. He completed an undergraduate degree, then a masters and finally a doctorate, all by part time study. His doctoral thesis was published as a book (The Social Nature of Mental Illness) in 1998, and a second book about positive attitudes to personality disordered people is influential and widely read. He first became a professor at City University where he commenced a program of research into inpatient care, and ways to reduce conflict (violence, absconding, substance use, rule breaking, and medication refusal) and containment (as required medication, coerced sedation, seclusion, special observation, manual restraint, etc.). He now leads a team of researchers investigating this issue at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, has completed more than £4 million of grant funded research, and has authored over a hundred peer reviewed publications. Speaking regularly at international conferences, Len has advised the UK government on policy issues and contributed to policy guidelines on psychiatric nursing practice.

For further information, contact:

Jean-Philippe Gagnon
Coordinator, Research Centre
Douglas Mental Health University Institute
6875, LaSalle blvd., Montreal (Quebec), H4H 1R3
Phone: 514.761.6131 ext. 2550
JeanPhilippe [dot] Gagnon [at] douglas [dot] mcgill [dot] ca

Hosted by Vulnérabilité, integration sociale et violence (VISEV) team and McGill’s Research Group on Health and Law.