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Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region

The Psychological Support Unit (PSU) performance in Saudi Red Crescent Authority (SRCA) showed that only a small number of case referred seeking psychological advice and management from PSU among all SRCA employees. However, research shows that between 28% and 52% of emergency medical services (EMS)...

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Autores principales: Alzahrani, Ahmad Yousif, Mahmod, Sabri abd Allah, Bakhamis, Thamer Mohammad, Al-Surimi, Khaled
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5699156/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29450278
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000089
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author Alzahrani, Ahmad Yousif
Mahmod, Sabri abd Allah
Bakhamis, Thamer Mohammad
Al-Surimi, Khaled
author_facet Alzahrani, Ahmad Yousif
Mahmod, Sabri abd Allah
Bakhamis, Thamer Mohammad
Al-Surimi, Khaled
author_sort Alzahrani, Ahmad Yousif
collection PubMed
description The Psychological Support Unit (PSU) performance in Saudi Red Crescent Authority (SRCA) showed that only a small number of case referred seeking psychological advice and management from PSU among all SRCA employees. However, research shows that between 28% and 52% of emergency medical services (EMS) providers usually seek psychological help in various EMS cultures, where 86% of them usually suffer from critical stress. Thus, we decided to design a quality improvement project that aims to improve the referral process by increasing cases referred to the PSU at SRCA in Riyadh Region by 75% in 2 months. A multidisciplinary team has been formed to analyse the problem using quality tools including, brainstorming, fishbone diagram and flow chart of the PSU processes. Several possible reasons have been identified, such as lack of awareness among the SRCA’s employees about PSU and its services, and the concern about privacy and confidentiality during psychological consultations in the PSU, in addition to the long referring process to PSU. The team decided to test the following change ideas: increasing the awareness of employees about the PSU services, improving the privacy and confidentiality during the consultation using electronic channels, and finally re-engineering the referral process to make it lean and remove all the unnecessary steps. Several improvement interventions have been tested sequentially in three consecutive Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles on a weekly basis. The project findings demonstrated that the first change idea was successful but not reaching the target while the second change had led to huge impact exceeding our target but with short effect. On the other hand, although the third change idea of re-engineering the PSU referral process had led to negative result initially, over the following weeks of measurement the results turned to be positive and meeting our expectations. We concluded that re-engineering referral process is most effective improvement intervention among other change ideas in term of magnitude and sustainability of the effect on increasing the number of referral cases to the PSU. We recommend conducting further testing and measuring of these change ideas in other PSU across the SRCA to understand the diffident context in other regions of SRCA.
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spelling pubmed-56991562018-02-15 Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region Alzahrani, Ahmad Yousif Mahmod, Sabri abd Allah Bakhamis, Thamer Mohammad Al-Surimi, Khaled BMJ Open Qual BMJ Quality Improvement Report The Psychological Support Unit (PSU) performance in Saudi Red Crescent Authority (SRCA) showed that only a small number of case referred seeking psychological advice and management from PSU among all SRCA employees. However, research shows that between 28% and 52% of emergency medical services (EMS) providers usually seek psychological help in various EMS cultures, where 86% of them usually suffer from critical stress. Thus, we decided to design a quality improvement project that aims to improve the referral process by increasing cases referred to the PSU at SRCA in Riyadh Region by 75% in 2 months. A multidisciplinary team has been formed to analyse the problem using quality tools including, brainstorming, fishbone diagram and flow chart of the PSU processes. Several possible reasons have been identified, such as lack of awareness among the SRCA’s employees about PSU and its services, and the concern about privacy and confidentiality during psychological consultations in the PSU, in addition to the long referring process to PSU. The team decided to test the following change ideas: increasing the awareness of employees about the PSU services, improving the privacy and confidentiality during the consultation using electronic channels, and finally re-engineering the referral process to make it lean and remove all the unnecessary steps. Several improvement interventions have been tested sequentially in three consecutive Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles on a weekly basis. The project findings demonstrated that the first change idea was successful but not reaching the target while the second change had led to huge impact exceeding our target but with short effect. On the other hand, although the third change idea of re-engineering the PSU referral process had led to negative result initially, over the following weeks of measurement the results turned to be positive and meeting our expectations. We concluded that re-engineering referral process is most effective improvement intervention among other change ideas in term of magnitude and sustainability of the effect on increasing the number of referral cases to the PSU. We recommend conducting further testing and measuring of these change ideas in other PSU across the SRCA to understand the diffident context in other regions of SRCA. BMJ Publishing Group 2017-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC5699156/ /pubmed/29450278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000089 Text en © Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/ This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
spellingShingle BMJ Quality Improvement Report
Alzahrani, Ahmad Yousif
Mahmod, Sabri abd Allah
Bakhamis, Thamer Mohammad
Al-Surimi, Khaled
Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region
title Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region
title_full Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region
title_fullStr Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region
title_full_unstemmed Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region
title_short Improving referral to psychological support unit at Saudi Red Crescent Authority in Riyadh Region
title_sort improving referral to psychological support unit at saudi red crescent authority in riyadh region
topic BMJ Quality Improvement Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5699156/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29450278
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000089
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