The Health Foundation has awarded the Royal College of Psychiatrists £ 826 000 to fund two projects aimed at improving the quality of mental health services in the UK. The projects form part of The Health Foundation's £4.5 million Engaging with Quality initiative, which aims to encourage clinical engagement in quality improvement.

The first project looks at improving the quality of prescribing for serious mental illness in partnership with the British Association for Psychopharmacology, the College of Mental Health Pharmacists and UK Psychiatric Pharmacists Group, Rethink, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. The group will set up a prescribing observatory to monitor prescribing from pharmacies serving acute in-patient facilities and the community. The first of two topics examined will be prescribing of high doses and polypharmacy of antipsychotic drugs to in-patients and will compare current practice with best practice as outlined in national clinical guidelines. The second topic will examine safe prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to out-patients compared with NICE guidelines.

Using the results, the project team will be able to rapidly feedback to lead clinicians within trusts and local patient organisations to encourage changes to prescribing towards national clinical guidelines. Interventions to support improvement may include, for example, improving the quality of educational materials available for patients.

The second project focuses on improving the quality of care for patients who self-harm. Using audit and peer review processes, the project will examine the management of self-harm in acute and general hospitals and mental health services compared with NICE guidelines. Patient representatives will be members of the local groups and visiting teams being set up under the project. As with the prescribing project, the results will be made available to participating clinicians and organisations as a stimulus to quality improvement. In addition, regional collaborations will be set up to educate and train individuals and organisations in quality improvement. These collaborations will help to ensure that improvements are spread geographically and sustained over time.

The Health Foundation's Engaging with Quality initiative responds to the work of Sheila Leatherman et al in The Quest for Quality, which identified clinical engagement as a prerequisite for quality improvement. The Health Foundation consulted widely and found that clinicians are not fully engaged in the quality agenda, and many do not have the skills required to bring about improvements. Engaging with Quality is specifically designed to support quality improvement projects run by professional bodies including Royal Colleges, specialist societies and associations.

‘Such an approach was chosen as professional bodies have the natural legitimacy and authority to command clinicians’ respect and hence are uniquely placed to encourage clinical support for quality improvement’, says Wendy Buckley, Assistant Director at The Health Foundation.

For further information about Engaging with Quality and the projects being funded, visit www.health.org.uk.