Volunteering

On occasions some patients on our inpatients settings must be restrained by staff for the safety of themselves or others. NICE guidelines advise that the patient should be given the opportunity to contribute to a debrief following any such interventions. Historically this has always been offered by staff, but this can be a challenge as often patients may find it hard to engage with staff following such incidents initially, due to high emotions or feeling that staff shouldn’t have restrained them, meaning engagement in debrief can be very low. As a way of changing this and increasing patient involvement in debrief we introduced a volunteer debrief role. The aim of the role is to give patients who had been restrained a voice, an opportunity to reflect and feedback on the event from their perspective. Allowing us all to learn and hopefully reduce such incidents going forward.