East Midlands AHSN has successfully hosted a Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme Shared Learning Event. The face-to-face event on 14 June 2022 brought together colleagues from mental health trusts and service user representatives from across the East Midlands – with the aim to showcase and share learning from the tremendous work that has taken place so far on reducing restrictive practice, reducing suicide and self-harm, and increasing sexual safety.

Attendees were able to deep-dive into the three streams of work, through workshops which were co-produced by patients. You can watch a summary of the workshops here.

They also heard from colleagues from East Midlands Mental Health Alliance and the Mental Health Patient Safety Network who applauded the commitment and dedication from all that have been involved in driving improvements.

The event was focused on celebrating the quality improvement activities taking place in trusts. Colleagues were also able to enter in Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme Shared Learning Event Awards. We’d like to congratulate the winners:

• Bracken Ward, St Andrews Healthcare, who won the Innovative Mental Health Intervention Award. Bracken Ward staff and patients jointly reviewed restrictive practices during community meetings and other monthly meetings. With this in place, there have been 12 restrictive practices that have been removed.
• Francis Willis Unit, Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust, who won the Coproduction Award For Encouraging Outstanding Patient And Public Contribution. Francis Willis Unit set up a Choice and Responsibility group, which was chaired by a patient. The remit of the group was to identify where improvement could be made to restrictive practices, and blanket rules and co-produce solutions that allowed the management of risk, whilst preparing patients for moving back towards community living.

A total of 18 posters were submitted for the event, showcasing the fantastic work happening in the across the region. Attendees on the day were given the opportunity to vote for their first, second and third favourite posters, and the winners were:

• First place went to ‘Supporting engagement following a crisis in a psychiatric intensive care unit within the personality disorder care stream in a high secure hospital’ by the Brecon Ward Team from Rampton, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
• Second place went to ‘Let’s start talking about sexual safety’ by the Sexual Safety Team at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
• Third place went to ‘Topaz quiet space to reduce self-harm’ by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

Take a look at all the posters here

If you have any further questions or would like to get involved in the Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme please contact Aisha Ajij, Project Officer, Patient Safety Collaborative, East Midlands Academic Health Science Network, on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.