'Good progress' on WLMHT wards says CQC

Wards at a London mental health trust have made ‘good progress’ according to the Care Quality Commission.

Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units (PICUs) at West London Mental Health NHS Trust have made good progress in some key areas. The trust had undertaken considerable work to better manage patient flow. This had resolved the issue of patients receiving care on one ward while sleeping on another ward.

Permanent and contracted agency members of staff were now receiving supervision regularly. Staff across the service said that they felt supported by their managers and that they were able to raise concerns.

Patients had up to date risk assessments and care plans. Records showed physical health screening was carried out regularly with follow up intervention when required.

Management had a good understanding of the acute and PICU services and knew about key risk areas in the services they managed.

Although there were gaps, ward managers had access to improved information about the ward to support them to manage the service.

However, there are areas where improvements still need to be made:

The trust had started environmental work across the wards to address ligature risks and blind spots. However, there was further work outstanding to mitigate a few remaining blind spots and the ligature action plans, while comprehensive, were not always clear about the timescales for this work.

While some wards had been reconfigured to reduce the incidence of female patients being secluded on male wards, this work needed to continue.

Some maintenance work in the wards had not been carried out in a timely fashion and some faulty equipment had not been reviewed.

There were high vacancy rates for nurses at the St Bernard’s site in Ealing.

There was no evidence in the service’s risk registers or the minutes of clinical governance meetings that the data accuracy or the lack of incident reporting had been identified or was in the process of being addressed.

Dr Paul Lelliott, Deputy Chief Inspector (and lead for mental health)said:

“Although on this occasion we have not re-rated WLMHT’s Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units, I was pleased to see that progress is being made. This has resulted in improved care for patients not just in mental health but in physical health too.”

Read the inspection report in full. Click the ‘Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units’ link at the top right hand side of the page.

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