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Quality Improvement Project: Increasing the Proportion of Inpatients Being Re-Offered and Receiving Baseline Physical Investigations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2023

Bethany Thompson*
Affiliation:
Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom. Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

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Aims

The Greater Manchester Mental Health trust standard on admitting patients states that “The patient will receive a comprehensive mental health & physical health assessment (including electrocardiogram (ECG) and routine admission bloods) commenced within 4 hours of admission”. It was observed that patients commonly do not receive admission blood tests or ECG. It was also identified that there is no current system for keeping track of those who have not received admission investigations or any guidance on re-offering them. The aims were therefore to: 1) Increase the proportion of patients being re-offered baseline physical investigations (blood tests and an ECG) after not receiving them on admission. 2) Increase the total proportion of patients receiving baseline physical investigations

Methods

The patients included were any male inpatients (n=41) across two wards between 23/05/22 and 17/06/22.

A list was created of all the patients who had not received admission investigations. Each patient had their notes searched to find out whether they had undergone blood tests and an ECG on admission. If they had not, their notes were searched to see if there was any evidence of them having been reoffered and/or done later. As patients were admitted, they were added to the list if they had not received admission investigations.

The list was taken to ward reviews with the intention of prompting a reoffer of investigations to the appropriate patients. Following the creation of the list, it was reviewed and updated weekly. After 4 weeks, percentages were calculated to determine if there had been an improvement in the proportion of patients being reoffered/receiving baseline investigations.

Results

85.14% patients did not receive admission bloods. 83.79% did not receive admission ECG.

Prior to the introduction of the list, 90% of patients who did not have admission bloods were reoffered. 55.77% patients had baseline (admission or on reoffer) bloods taken. 85.72% patients who did not have admission ECG were reoffered. 78.85% patients had a baseline ECG.

During the 4 weeks following the introduction of the list, 97.5% patients who did not have admission bloods were reoffered. After 4 weeks, 85.14% of all patients had baseline bloods taken. 95% patients who did not have an ECG were reoffered. After 4 weeks, 86.49% of all had a baseline ECG.

Conclusion

Following the introduction of the list, the proportion of patients being reoffered baseline blood tests and ECGs increased.

The proportion of patients receiving baseline blood tests and an ECG also increased.

Type
Quality Improvement
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This does not need to be placed under each abstract, just each page is fine.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Footnotes

Abstracts were reviewed by the RCPsych Academic Faculty rather than by the standard BJPsych Open peer review process and should not be quoted as peer-reviewed by BJPsych Open in any subsequent publication.

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