Health professionals’ perspectives of safety issues in mental health services: A qualitative study

The study aimed to explore mental health professionals’ perceptions of patient safety issues across community and inpatient mental health services. Fourteen mental health professionals across community and inpatient settings participated in qualitative interviews. Framework analysis, guided by the Yorkshire Contributory Factors Framework – Mental Health, was used to analyse the data. Safety issues identified by mental health professionals mapped on to 19 of the 21 factors in the Yorkshire Contributory Factors Framework – Mental Health. The factors most frequently mentioned by participants were ‘safety culture’ which focused on raising concerns, learning from incidents and the influence of targets; ‘communication systems’ to support effective communication between staff; ‘service user factors’ including a perceived increase in illness acuity; ‘service process’ including how patients access and interact with services; and ‘staff workload’ perceived being as unmanageable. Mental health professionals consider there to be a broad range of safety issues associated with mental health services. Future research should aim to develop interventions to improve safety focused across the factors raised by professionals.