The participants all had some sort of experience in patient safety or mental health care. The idea was to see how much information the participants could gather on the topic of patient safety in mental health care and to look at the quality and extent of that research. In the end, they determined that the amount of information available on this particular topic was very limited. They also found that there were different views on how to define “patient safety” that changed from institution to institution, as well as from individual to individual. This was determined to be a major concern because it leads to misunderstandings and miscommunication within the institution and particularly during transfer situations. The other major issue determined by the discussion participants was that stigma and stereotyping plays a major role in “access to care, quality of care, and health outcomes” in mental health (p 4). This leads to a lack of funding for care and research. The board decided that it was necessary to take these issues to the national level in order to improve patient safety as well as research funding for this particular topic. Smaller steps to fixing the problem could include further training for staff at mental health …show more content…
As stated previously, I strongly believe that keeping up with health care trends and faults is an important aspect of becoming a better nurse and coworker. As students, we may not always get to see the negative issues of the mental health care setting. The little time that we actually get to spend in clinical gets consumed by paperwork and field experience. But it is important for us to understand that there are legal and ethical issues that exist, and for us to learn from the research that is available in an attempt to avoid becoming a part of that negative statistic. This assignment will help us to avoid stereotyping mental health patients and provide the same quality of care that we would for any other patient. I will use the information I gathered from this research article to help me apply the basics of patient safety on a deeper level, especially in psychiatric care, and make a special effort to protect my future patients from environmental harm as well as self inflicted injury. Knowing just a little bit of extra information can make all the difference when you are dealing with the lives of other