Specialist mental health suite in Wakefield rated excellent
A treatment suite for people with serious mental health problems has been recognised as continuing to provide excellent services after an external review.
The ECT treatment suite, which is run by South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, provides specialist treatment for people with severe mental health problems including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which can be used as a treatment for severe depression which has not responded to other therapies.
The service received notification from the ECT Accreditation Service (ECTAS) that it has demonstrated that it has met all the current revised standards and has been once again been awarded Accreditation with Excellence. Its report said, “They have continued to maintain high standards and the quality of documentation and team working remains outstanding. There is an excellent system of monitoring of patients, throughout treatment, in-house”.
The ECTAS is run by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and it sets out to assure and improve the quality of the administration of ECT across the country. As well as providing a quality assured service for people who need to use it, becoming accredited by ECTAS also allows the achievements of staff to be recognised and for services to receive detailed advice and support to improve.
Speaking about the accreditation John Newsom, acting clinical service manager, said, “All the staff in the teams have worked hard to achieve this accreditation and to provide a high quality service for service users. The accreditation is part of a continuous quality improvement process for our ECT services and we are really pleased to be able to offer a first rate care environment in which service users can feel comfortable and at ease. We aim to be a strong, cohesive team that is proactive in implementing evidence based developments and best practice. Numerous requests to share our documentation have been made from other Trust’s and in addition to the recognition of our work from ECTAS, we consider these to be testimonies of our effective and productive work.”
Alex Farrell, the Trust’s acting chief executive said, “We are delighted that the ECT facility has been awarded full accreditation and rated excellent. Staff have worked hard to achieve a high level of customer focused, safe and effective practice which has been recognised by the review.”