Service Improvement
Clinical Decision Making Skills for the Integrated Worker
This assignment will define and analyse the need for a chosen service improvement within the pathway of mental health, as well as evaluating the suggested service. Demonstrating how this service can inform and benefit integrated practice, discussing the ways in which the agency’s statutory obligations and responsibilities impact on both individual and group decision making. The chosen service improvement for this assignment is the introduction of a mental health nurse into primary care services, for example, a GP Surgery. Focusing on service users with mental health issues in the community and therefore in the care of the local Primary Care Trust (PCT).
There is an obvious need for movement towards better health and social care for individuals with mental health illnesses in primary care. No Health without Mental Health: A Guide for General Practice (Department of Health, DoH, 2012, online), sets out what General Practitioners (GPs) can do to improve mental health and enhance care and support offered to those with mental health conditions in the community. This document also states that one in four GP consultations account for mental health problems (DoH, 2012, pg8, online). Treatments for those with mental health issues cost the NHS in the United Kingdom approximately £105 Billion per year (DoH, 2012, pg8, online). Primary care plays a pivotal role in caring for those with mental health illnesses in the community and in most cases this falls into the responsibility of the local GP surgeries. Therefore GPs are ideally placed to identify signs of distress and those with risk factors for poor mental health (NHS Confederation, 2011, online). Primary care providers, more specifically GPs are usually the first point of call for an individual experiencing some form of psychological distress (DoH, 2012, pg13, online). It is essential there is early recognition and referral to any specialist mental health
This assignment will define and analyse the need for a chosen service improvement within the pathway of mental health, as well as evaluating the suggested service. Demonstrating how this service can inform and benefit integrated practice, discussing the ways in which the agency’s statutory obligations and responsibilities impact on both individual and group decision making. The chosen service improvement for this assignment is the introduction of a mental health nurse into primary care services, for example, a GP Surgery. Focusing on service users with mental health issues in the community and therefore in the care of the local Primary Care Trust (PCT).
There is an obvious need for movement towards better health and social care for individuals with mental health illnesses in primary care. No Health without Mental Health: A Guide for General Practice (Department of Health, DoH, 2012, online), sets out what General Practitioners (GPs) can do to improve mental health and enhance care and support offered to those with mental health conditions in the community. This document also states that one in four GP consultations account for mental health problems (DoH, 2012, pg8, online). Treatments for those with mental health issues cost the NHS in the United Kingdom approximately £105 Billion per year (DoH, 2012, pg8, online). Primary care plays a pivotal role in caring for those with mental health illnesses in the community and in most cases this falls into the responsibility of the local GP surgeries. Therefore GPs are ideally placed to identify signs of distress and those with risk factors for poor mental health (NHS Confederation, 2011, online). Primary care providers, more specifically GPs are usually the first point of call for an individual experiencing some form of psychological distress (DoH, 2012, pg13, online). It is essential there is early recognition and referral to any specialist mental health
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