Text size: a | a | a

Our recommendations

  1. Services should review the need for restrictions to freedom of choice, especially in relation to locking kitchen and bedroom doors during the day.
  2. Policies on dealing with incidents in hospital should describe how someone is to be supported following threats or aggression and what feedback is to be given to the individual after the event.
  3. There is a need for NHS boards to set admission criteria for wards in order to prevent the development of resident groups with widely disparate mental and physical health care needs.
  4. People should be offered and actively encouraged to participate in appropriate, individualised programmes of activity and recreation.
  5. Smoking cessation, dietary advice and physical exercise programmes should be actively - and repeatedly - promoted in rehabilitation and continuing care wards, employing appropriately qualified staff to support this hospital population.
  6. The Mental Welfare Commission publications on 'Consent to Treatment' and 'Covert Medication' should be made widely available in all wards and appropriate training in these areas put in place.