Instructions  

Nursing leaders and bedside staff are often confronted with problems that affect their workflow and ability to deliver best practices to their patients. One example of a policy that has been adopted by many healthcare organizations to reduce confusion and improve efficiency in communication is the use of the SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, & Recommendation) tool to ensure clear, concise, and effective communication between professions. Describe a situation or issue that you see within your work environment or local community related to a healthcare issue and describe what you believe the solution would look like.

SOLUTION 

Week 1: Problem Identification for Public and Policy Decision Makers

Today the demand for public behavioral health services is extremely high as the crisis in mental health care continues. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality Statistics, “in 2007, one in eight people, or nearly 12 million hospital emergency department visits, were for mental health disorders, substance use or both” (2010). Increasingly, emergency departments are struggling with the increasing number of mentally ill patients falling through the cracks due to lack of needed mental health services and supports. Patients requiring more intensive psychiatric care are often “boarded” in the ED for additional hours to days as they wait for the transfer process to complete or for beds to become available. This process frequently results in ED overcrowding, which lowers the quality of care for mental health patients and results in higher risks of adverse outcomes for all ED patients.

Mental health services delivered through the ED require more than twice the time as the average medical protocol offered in the same setting. Psychiatric boarding can have a significant impact on already scarce ED resources. Boarding mental health patients result in increased nursing and security staffing, has a significant financial impact on ED reimbursement, increases costs associated with unnecessary diagnostic and laboratory tests required by inpatient psychiatric treatment programs prior to accepting a patient from the ED for admission and transfer ….please click the purchase button below to access the entire solution at $10