Safe staffing in mental health
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Safe staffing in acute mental health wards in Yorkshire and Humber
IRAS ID
200455
Contact name
John Baker
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 30 days
Research summary
At the beginning of June 2015, NICE’s work on safe staffing and capacity in mental health services was halted. There remains little research evidence in this area and accurately determining safe staffing levels remains problematic, particularly given reports of increasing severity of illness and detentions under the Mental Health Act in the inpatient population. A recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) report on crisis mental health care concluded that ‘local providers and commissioners have to ask serious questions about whether the services they provide are safe’.
With our Trust partners we have developed the #safestaffing Yorkshire and Humber study that will explore the regional experience in terms of staffing and adverse outcomes in acute mental health wards. The objective is to develop a new model of nurse staffing in acute mental health wards. We aim to estimate the impact of staff complement and mix on the probability and frequency of various adverse outcomes in acute mental health wards and to clarify the cost/benefit trade-off of increasing staff numbers, by type and grade. We want to do this by analysing anonymised, routinely collected, ward level data about staffing type and adverse incidents.REC name
West Midlands - Edgbaston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/WM/0140
Date of REC Opinion
17 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion