Being truly open and honest with bereaved families
Failure to answer legitimate questions can often prevent families cope and recover from their loss. It can leave them psychologically stuck, still grieving, unable to move on.
healthcare
The importance of meaningful family engagement following a patient safety incident
Commentary over many years has described the importance of meaningful family engagement following a patient safety incident. Failing to effectively involve patients and families excludes their experiences from investigations and perpetuates feelings that their voices are not heard.
Suicide without ideation
To prevent such deaths requires health professionals to take a broader view of risk than ideation. This is also true for tragic homicides by people with acute mental illness. Health professionals need to listen attentively to the concerns of family members, and/or friends.
My FLO experience
It is the role of the FLO to provide this support, create, manage and foster relationships, engender trust; facilitate communication and create links between any other professionals whose input is required and the families concerned facilitate communication and create links between any other professionals whose input is required and the families concerned.
Suicide as a result of domestic abuse
Between four and ten women take their own lives each week in the UK because of domestic abuse. For families this is a dark, lonely and challenging place.
Complaints are Gold
Many families report that they are afraid to raise concerns and complaints. They worry that doing so will have a negative impact on the support that their loved one receives, or that they will be further alienated from being involved in their loved ones lives. This has to change!
What can one person do to achieve change?
Many years ago, as a young woman, I also wanted to change the world. I wanted the inequalities within and between countries to be reduced.
Family Liaison Officers – the future of Family Support after NHS Incidents?
Like so many organisations, over the last year we’ve had to adjust to running on-line webinars, instead of face-to-face training. We learned a lot from our face-to-face training and now we’re using that knowledge in our webinars. In our old style training we travelled all over England, running all day training sessions for up to 150 heath care staff members (very often NHS Trusts) from all levels, from CEO and Governors to staff who worked in A&E, Maternity and Wards. With staff who worked in Mental Health, staff who worked with elderly people, with children, with people with Learning Disabilities …
Working to improve mental health services
The lead psychiatrist for the mental health trust phoned me. She was thoughtful, reflective and kind. I felt that she and her team were trying to reflect and learn.
Inquest – a family’s perspective
My much loved daughter in law Mariana Pinto died, aged 32, on 16 October 2016. The Coroner, issued a narrative verdict at the end of the inquest, on 13 March 2017: “Mariana Pinto died on Sunday, 16 October 2016, when she stepped over the balcony of her home, fell from the third floor, and after some minutes rolled off the glass roof on which she had landed to the ground below. Her actions were deliberate, but she did not have the understanding necessary to categorise these as suicide. She was in a confused state with features of psychosis. This was …