mental health CAPSTONE question QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

[imallinbaby2262]

Hi guys,

I'm getting ready to do my mental health capstone soon. We are supposed to do a "quality improvement" topic on mental health to present on the unit. It's one of the requirements for capstone. I dont have many ideas what topic I should choose. I have one and would love to hear if its even a quality improvement topic. I was going to do "needing more group therapy on psych unit." (my preceptor said there's not enough group therapy on the unit) The quality improvement on this would be patients spending on more time with one another as a group vs being alone on unit depressed and possibly hurting themselves. ( I will do more research on this) Is this a QI topic???

I dont know much about mental health. If you guys have any "quality improvement topic," please please help me out for capstone.

Thank you so much!!!

[imallinbaby2262]

anyone??????????

[Dogen]

I think you'd be better off asking more people in your unit. If the topic is relevant to them it'll be received better. My unit has plenty of therapy, for instance.

You could make increased therapy a QI project, but you'd first have to identify the problem - why is the current state not ideal? What problem develops or is exacerbated, or what positives are lost because of the current state? Then identify a preferred future state based on evidence (i.e. find out what the literature recommends).

QI is all about figuring out how to get from the current state to the future state. Identifying the people, resources, etc. who need to be involved, talking to stakeholders (other staff, patients, management) about their ideas for change... It's fun, but can be challenging. Good luck!

[imallinbaby2262]

Thank you so much!!

i'm open for more suggestions

thanks

[nutella, MSN, RN]

Perhaps you want to look at those links for some inspiration:

http://www.who.int/mental_health/resources/en/Quality.pdf

CQAIMH - center for quality assessment and improvement in mental health

National Behavioral Health Quality Framework | SAMHSA

Quality Indicators Report - American Psychiatric Nurses Association

http://www.nasmhpd.org/sites/default/files/SAMHSA%20Quality%20Improvement%20Initiative.pdf

http://www.mcleanhospital.org/eBASIS -especially hospital based information

without more information it is hard to say something useful plus I am not a mental health nurse.

But in general I think it is a good idea to look at some metrics, regulations and hot topics and determine what could improve. You must have learned in your studies about how to implement and plan projects? So you have to also look at change theory, implementation like PDSA cycle, evaluation of project and so on and forth.

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

A general first question when looking for a QI project is this: "What does this hospital/ unit/ department measure?"

If they are measuring it- they are tracking something with an eye toward improvement.