competence and confidence in relation to suicide risk assessment, risk management
and documentation. This is achieved by using the process outlined above to:
» Understand past and present risk factors;
» Explore the rationale for decisions made;
» Examine interventions and the impact of these; and
» Link all of this to theory and practice.The peer review is an opportunity to
reflect and explore alternatives. Our preliminary work demonstrates it is extremely useful to set this up and we have been able to work with colleagues in our neighbouring trust; this provides a wider view and promotes collaborative working.
Staff also valued feedback from colleagues who are not involved in the ward.
We found that the process described in Fig 1 can also give teams an understanding
of each other’s thinking around risk; this, in turn, can reduce some of the tensions found in referring patients between teams and the decision-making process around patient
care plans. Staff report increased confidence and in future we intend to measure
this pre- and post-session with the Risk Assessment and Management Self-Efficacy
Scale (Delgadillo et al, 2014).Improvement in clinical documentation The peer-review process is being robustly audited and results are encouraging. In the three months after its introduction, there