Challenges & objectives

Challenges

Currently, psychiatric emergency services for in Manchester are based around three medical on-call teams. WTD compliance could be achieved by combining existing rotas and work patterns. However, this compliance would be at the cost of doctors’ working shifts with relatively low workloads and poor educational opportunities. It would also lead to pressured day time hours with difficulty in providing specialised training in psychological skills, audit skills, research and management. The PEARL project will provide junior medical staff with explicit educational support from consultants and other professionals built into the model of working, and allows a much clearer path for achieving competency in emergency psychiatric care.

Specific objectives of the pilot

Specific objectives of this project are:

• To apply the principles of Hospital at Night reconfiguration and workforce redesign for the first time to an integrated mental health economy. The work will focus on a mental health trust in a major conurbation with severe social deprivation
• The development of the new service (PEARL) will achieve functional separation between integrated emergency/crisis care and non-emergency care
• To improve educational opportunities for doctors in training who will have periods of experiencing emergency services distinct from training periods within the various non-emergency services
• To increase the ability of doctors in training to develop defined skills assessed using a competency-based system that will link to the development of the competency framework to be adopted through the roll-out of MMC into Mental Health.

Delivering compliance

This pilot will:

• Be a unique emergency mental health service, which will offer clear opportunities for benchmarking across the wider NHS
• Allow the learning and dissemination to be available in time to use the learning in other mental health trusts in achieving WTD 2009 compliance.