The concept of clinical risk management is concerned with the aspect of making improvements to the quality and safety of health services in the mental health sector. As such, this achieved by pointing out the circumstances and opportunities that create risks to patients and staff and identify the approaches that can be adopted to prevent such risks through risk assessment and management. Risk assessment and management have become a primary element of mental health services in modern times, and the significance of good practice in this specific health care area cannot be disputed. The process of risk management and assessment are by no means easy to undertake since nurses are faced with difficulties and ethical dilemmas when incorporating the activities into their daily working schedule. The term risk in mental healthcare is exemplified as the probability of a specific negative event occurring within a specified period and emanating from a stipulated hazard. The risk is always framed to be negative and that there is a possibility of happening rather than probability.
Risk management makes up a critical aspect of mental healthcare and the care program approach through the process of discharge planning. Discharge planning follows a due process meant to ensure that the patient is released following the due process of risk management (American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM)). The provision of efficient care in the mental health care situations means that a person's overall needs are well known and as well as an awareness of the degree of risk, which they present to themselves in or other people. Experts in the field acknowledge and note that the modern risk management practices should be well structured, evidence based and consistent based on the needs of the consumers (Cordell 10). The consistency in practice ensures that there exists a good communication between agencies and practitioners.
The areas of risk considered when working in the mental health situations include mental instability, self-harm, vulnerability and risk to other people working or visiting the facility. Vulnerability means that a person is exposed to adverse outcome or harm, which emanate from personal or external factors that include but not limited to poverty, homelessness, capability deficits, and community or family pressure. Self-harm of the individual includes many factors such as intentionally injuring or killing themselves or engaging in behaviors that are destructive to their safety or health. Mental health care patients are always at risk of harming themselves and thus need to be chaperoned most of the times to ensure that they are safe from hurting or injuring themselves (Cordall 21). As such, this means that they have an unpredictable function of the mental health particularly on command, hallucination and other disturbing or psychotic situations. The risk to others consideration means the risk of causing danger or harm to others in the environment.
Program of Risk Management in Mental Healthcare
Risks in the clinical mental health care setting always fluctuate on a regular basis due to the ever changing clinical and environment circumstances. Therefore, the risks are inherent and the environment needs to be re-assessed regularly to ensure that the management of the healthcare facility is up to date. However, it is always difficult to predict the risks accurately, and thus the assessment and prediction of the risks need not be a 100% accurate. Risk assessment is mostly viewed as an evaluation of an ongoing situation as opposed to a particular event (Vincent 780). All the individuals working in the facility are always responsible for their work including assessing the possible risks and doing something to manage them accordingly.
Risk Assessment
The process of risk assessment in the organization is critical in some important critical scenarios such as during intake, transfer or discharge of mental care patients as well as when there is a major change in mental state. The process of risk assessment is conducted numerous times to ascertain that the risk in question does not pose any immediate or future dangers to the safety of patients or workers. The different components of the risk assessment process include focusing on identifying the type of harm that may occur, the timeframe and scenarios under which it might occur and the likelihood of the event occurring (Vincent 778). The encouragement to assess risks in an organization is to ensure that it leads to better management, which results in better outcomes. After assessing the risk, the process of formulating the risk is conducted, and a plan of risk management is drawn up.
Risk Formulation
The process of formulating a risk in the mental healthcare helps to make a summary of the process and lay the ground work for a management plan. The process forms a crucial linkage between risk assessment process and the process of managing the risk as well. The process of risk formulation contains some components including the background, current situation, risk factors, risk status and timeframe for assessment.
Risk Management
The process of managing risks aims at developing the correct steps to reduce risks, action and review the results of the undertaken actions. The risk management plan should be aligned with the processes of risk assessment and risk formulation to come up with a better end result. The risk management plan should take into consideration the immediate risks; make an outline of the management process as well as address future preventive actions. The risk management team enables the entire mental healthcare facility to come up with ways of mitigating the risks if they occur or totally eradicate them. Such outcomes are achieved through ensuring that the risk management plan goes in line with the risk assessment and risk formulation processes.
Works Cited
American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM). Risk Management Handbook for Health Care Organizations, 3 Volume Set. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print .
Cordall, J. "Risk Assessment and Management." Risk Assessment and Management in Mental Health Nursing, 2009, pp. 9-47, doi:10.1002/9781444312171.ch2.
Vincent, C. "How to investigate and analyse clinical incidents: Clinical Risk Unit and Association of Litigation and Risk Management protocol." BMJ, vol. 320, no. 7237, 2000, pp. 777-781, doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7237.777.
