The Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in Badalona (Barcelonès Nord) continues to innovate for the improvement of patients admitted to its Psychiatry Unit, the first in a tertiary hospital in Catalonia to implement a pioneering and benchmark hospitalization model.
It was two years ago, when the so-called 'open door' model was launched, a different way of caring for patients admitted with mental health disorders and which is based on experiences from around the world that have shown that new forms of hospitalization They reduce the number of conflicts, self-harming behaviors and restrictive measures towards these patients.
In this sense, the most significant, innovative and symbolic action of this model is that, from the first day of admission, and during some moments of the day, the patients of this unit can leave the room and walk, accompanied, through other areas. of the unit, in other spaces of the Hospital and even outside.
In part, thanks to the patients' own pathology, conflictive situations continue to occur in the unit on a day-to-day basis, something that requires having a system that, in addition to assessing the nursing care load, monitors the behavioral risks of each of the patients, such as escape, aggression or self-harm.
Until now, this evaluation, which gives a global view of the state of the unit, is done by its professionals in an analog and manual way, categorizing, with the colors of a traffic light, whether it is convenient for each patient to go beyond their room. However, from now on this assessment of risks and workloads will end up being done in an automated and digital way through artificial intelligence, so that an algorithm, thanks to the monitoring of previously introduced indicators, will be able to advise professionals, objectively, what to do at each moment.
"Implementing measures to equalize the treatment of mental health patients with those of the rest of the hospital favors the reduction of the stigma they suffer and has been shown to have both a healthcare and social impact," says Joan De Pablo, head of the Psychiatry Service. , for whom open doors are nothing more than “the tip of the iceberg”, the final fruit of a process in which other actions have also been worked on, such as enhancing the physical activity of patients, occupational and sensory therapy, participation from former patients of the unit who explain their experience and the use of new technologies, for example.
For their part, both the head of the Emergency and Hospitalization section, Jorge Cuevas, and the nursing supervisor of the adult psychiatry ward, Esther Ruíz, add the importance of continuing to apply a nursing model imported from the United Kingdom that has proven be able to reduce restrictive therapeutic measures and conflicts within the units. This model - called 'Safewards' - establishes a dozen interventions, such as clarifying what expectations the patient has regarding the staff when they enter, promoting knowledge between the patient and the professionals who treat them or the use of positive expressions when passing through. on call.
“In short, they are different ways of interacting with the patient, which facilitate fluid, more professional and close communication, which avoids the traditional, very paternalistic and authoritarian model,” they summarize before confirming that working with respect for humanization, ethics and the right of people, "improves the quality of care and the final result: whoever leaves our hospitalization comes out better."
This model, which the Service is studying to export and replicate to other hospital centers, is applied in mental health care spaces launched a few months ago. They are located on the twelfth floor of the general building and have served to expand the psychiatric hospitalization capacity of the adult population to twenty beds, to better respond to the needs of the territory.
A youth hospitalization facility has also been located for Barcelonès Nord, which has resulted in the creation of a dozen psychiatric hospitalization beds for children under 18 years of age. These new spaces allow people with mental health problems who need hospital care to receive immediate care in appropriate devices and avoid patients having to travel to Barcelona.
