The scientific article titled ‘Development and rapid evaluation of services to support the physical health of people using psychiatric inpatient units during the COVID-19 pandemic: study protocol’ was published by Williams et al. with Implementation Science Communications. The article is the first of its kind reported in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can read the full article by clicking here.
The role of Consultant Connect
The article explores the importance of supporting the physical health management of people who have serious mental illness and are in psychiatric inpatient units, to improve their physical health and ultimately increase their life expectancy. To do this, the article discusses how the “Integration of mental and physical health can help this to happen effectively” (Williams et al., 2021).
By using qualitative and quantitative methods, the article studies a Virtual Physical Health Clinic and Consultant Connect services in working partnership with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM). The article concludes that their study “will provide useful information on this type of integration which is particularly timely during the COVID-19 pandemic” and that “The expected benefits of these services are improved management of physical health conditions on psychiatric inpatients units and ultimately better physical health outcomes for service users.” (Williams et al., 2021).
You can find out more about our partnership with SLaM by reading this blog article:
You may also like to listen to our ‘Maudsley Learning Webinar Series’ that we hosted last year which focuses on the psychiatry of pandemics – click here.
References:
Williams, J., Fairbairn, E., McGrath, R. et al. Development and rapid evaluation of services to support the physical health of people using psychiatric inpatient units during the COVID-19 pandemic: study protocol. Implement Sci Commun 2, 12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43058-021-00113-0
