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Mental health liaison service
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About the service
The mental health liaison service provides mental health and psychiatric assessments to patients from accident and emergency and wards at Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
The service combines the responsibilities of each speciality ensuring each patient’s mental health needs are given the same priority as their physical needs.
The service is also able to give advice on clinical management of patients and/or referral to other psychiatric agencies/substance and alcohol services if needed.
Why would someone choose the service?
- The team are actively involved with other services to improve information sharing and quality of the service provided including attendance at the maternal mental health group and the high-intensity user group
- The team actively educate other areas of the service, for example, educating Emergency Department staff in relation to deliberate self-harm so that staff can support service users when presenting at the general hospital
- The team have access to mental health record systems to gather relevant information about service users who can be distressed to recall significant information. These systems also allow for information to be shared with mental health services
- The team continually develop and access external training/speakers to improve clinical practice
- The team offer a responsive 24 7 week service
Staff you may meet
- There are more than 60 different specialities that doctors work within the NHS. Each is unique but there are many characteristics which are common. Roles range from working in a hospital to being based in the community as a GP.
- Nurses who choose to specialise in the mental health branch of nursing work with GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists, and others, to help care for patients. Increasingly, care is given in the community, with mental health nurses visiting patients and their families at home, in residential centres, in prisons or in specialist clinics or units.
- Social workers help, support and protect people who are facing difficulties in their lives. They help people to take positive steps to overcome problems and improve their lives. This could involve assessing and reviewing a service user’s situation, building relationships with service users and their families and agreeing what practical support someone needs.
Why a professional should choose the service
- The mental health liaison service offers support to 100% of all service users attending Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust who have deliberately self-harmed
- We provide an ongoing training package to emergency department staff to promote education around mental health. We also regularly capture feedback to help improve and identify areas of training (quality performance indicators)
- The service has close links with other mental health services to ensure continuity of care, especially with the intensive home based treatment team, which allows us to maintain 24 hour service provision
- We are focussed on building excellent relationships with all professionals across the hospital site.
- We ensure timely responses to all referrals
- The mental health liaison service has an ongoing commitment to service development ensuring staff receive ongoing training and continued professional development
- The service has access to medical cover including a consultant psychiatrist
Support offered
- Comprehensive assessments which combine thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and social factors
- Training and education to medical and nursing staff
- Management of any continued risk the patient may present
- Liaison with statutory and non- statutory services
Outcomes
- To ensure that patients in a hospital setting have the same level of access to a consultant psychiatrist as they would have from a consultant specialising in physical health problems
- Ensure that anyone presenting with deliberate self-harming/suicidal behaviour has timely access to an assessment
- When requests for assessment are made, the service will respond within 4 hours for those in the accident and emergency department or 2 hours where high-risk harm to self or others is identified
Referrals accepted from:
A & E, Drug/alcohol agencies, Hospital staff, Midwives, Other Trust services
Referrals also accepted from:
Referrals also accepted from inpatient wards at Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, outpatient clinics.
Referral criteria:
- Aged 18 and over
- Those who have undertaken acts of deliberate self-harm or threats of self-harm and suicide
- Evidence of severe emotional disorder impacting on medical care
- Presentation of medically unexplained physical symptoms
- The medical team has identified that the person has a functional mental illness which requires psychiatric review. Functional mental illnesses include depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, alcohol/drug addiction.
The service will not accept referrals for:
- Primary substance misuse problems where no co-morbid psychiatric symptoms exist
- Patients who have cognitive decline or memory deficits as their primary mental health problem
- Acute confusional states