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.
patient engagement
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.
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.
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.
Using positive engagement to fill in the gaps
Last week I met a lovely young woman whose brother had died from a brain tumour 10 months earlier. She felt that she could tell me about this because I met her in a work capacity and she had already listened to me talking about grief and my own struggles to find a way through traumatic bereavement. As we talked, she opened up a bit more and started telling me how she was feeling. I haven’t been able to get the conversation out of my head and the more I thought about it, the more I felt the need to …