Tag: management
Managing tail risk in psychiatry – collaborative mapping
Too often in psychiatry we are faced with the problem of tail risk. The basic idea is ‘low probability high impact‘ events. This commonly presents among relatively stable patients in contrast to patients in an acute phase of disturbance. Some patients may have an established pattern of only one or two short-lived periods of disturbance per year where they present risks of suicide, homicide or violence, or arson. In any of those short-lived blips it is possible that serious harmRead More …
Systemic disempowerment in care-delivery organisations
Today I explore the term ‘systemic disempowerment‘ (SD) as pertains to large health and social care services. Health services are without doubt inseparably intertwined with social care services. The concept of SD moves beyond ideas of learned helplessness, which is so often thrown around. The concept of SD is far wider and deeper as this exploration will show. There is no easy way to make this blog readable in the desirable 30 second read; now widely popular among social mediaRead More …
Why lessons are not so easy to learn
The context of this exploration is twofold a) to examine how lessons may not be learned by individuals and b) difficulty for organisations in learning lessons. What ordinary people expect Let us start by understanding how ordinary people might decide what is a lesson learned. I suggest that they may expect the following: Cause and effect recognition: Many people see learning a lesson as straightforwardly recognising a direct cause and effect relationship. “I did X, and Y happened as aRead More …
Time management chaos or science?
Health service work involves complex and competing demands on time. No one should be surprised by that. Psychiatrists are often given some time management strategies to work with in their basic and higher training. However, my experience over the last 20 years is that most of those strategies fail. The reasons are: Excessive workloads Increasing demands for quality based on a number of relevant standards (in the public domain). The frequent unexpected number of urgent and complex situations that turnRead More …
Risk – how is that to be managed?
Psychiatry is full of risks. Without delay here is a short incomplete list: Risk to self Self-harm Suicide. Accidental injury or death. Self-neglect. Exploitation of various kinds. Risk to others Injury – from violence or aggression. Sex offences Homicide Fire and other property damage. Terrorism Risk to health Physical illness Mental health The context of this post is about risks managed in mental health services. Some of the ideas here may inspire deeper thought in other circles. For a soundRead More …