Launch events

Hi All,
I work as the Clinical Nurse Specialist on an Adult Acute Inpatient Psychiatric Ward in Dunedin, New Zealand. We are in the process of launching/introducing Safewards on the wards here in Dunedin and Invercargill. I was wondering if other places had a 'launch', or if it was introduced slowly over time? Your experience would be interesting!
Cheers, Steve

This is a great question Steve. I hope you don't mind that I have moved it to 'implementation and evaluation' and given it a title which is more clear.

I am curious to see what response people have. I mention this question over on fb too.

Len

Thanks Len,
I was also thinking about collecting some baseline data to see if we could make use of it at the point we evaluate the changes we have made? I've used the ward-atmosphere scale before, but will look for other measures used in the previous studies.

We will obviously have a sense of conflict/containment events from our incident reporting system, but it doesn't always reflect the reality of the ward experience.

Another thought I had was about whether there was an 'implementation profile' for a ward to complete prior to implementation? This would give an idea of the order of implementation and what is going to be noticed by staff? The ward I work on has a comparatively low incidence of violence or verbal abuse, but can have a high self-harm incidence. If we did a big push on 'talk-down' the staff on my ward wouldn't find it that helpful for example.

Hi Steve and Len

We are in the process of implementing Safewards, on our Acute Adult inpatient Unit based in the Brisbane Bayside. We have executive and managerial support, but it's being driven by the ward staff, this has improved the level of participation and has empowered staff as a result, we are implementing it slowly over time, so we can embed and engage the staff at each stage. I think if we attempted to launch and implement all the interventions within the same time frame, people may experience fatigue realistically I think it may take up to a year maybe more to implement, I am happy to chat more or via email if you would like
Hope this helps

Hi Caroline,
Thanks for your post. It sounds great that you are starting implementing Safewards on your ward. Brisbane isn't that far from Dunedin, so it's good to know others locally! When you say it is being driven by your nursing staff do you mean from you and your colleagues? your Charge Nurse or Manager? How did you get to the point of saying 'Yes', we will implement it? Did anyone say 'No"?

Hi Steve, good luck with implementation and say hello to Mark Baldwin for us.

For what it’s worth, I think Caroline is right in taking a long term approach and that is what we have seen in the UK. Interesting, in Wales where it was introduced on a PICU, the impetus came from a ward manager who organised a “launch event” to advertise the implementation and then used that momentum to get the first few interventions off the ground. From there it took six months plus to get all ten up and running. The same happened in Reading where a ward had a huge MDT launch event which included a workshop deciding which interventions to start with. Again, I think it took six months plus to get all up and running. Therfore the launch events (which are really presentations of Safewards model and evident – much like Len’s Video on youtube) were really showcase introductions to get the ball rolling.