Quality Improvement Project to ameliorate the provision of mental health support to our children with epilepsy

Objectives:

To explore the need for mental health support for children in our epilepsy service across 2 District General Hospitals, part of same Trust. Anecdotally, we knew this was an issue as parents were asking us for support but there was no in house psychology available. Hence, we decided to undertake this Quality Improvement Project (QIP) to ameliorate the provision of mental health support.

Methods:

Questionnaire was devised in discussion with Psychologist who works with Diabetes team, to identify the mental health needs in our children and we rightly signposted them to easily accessible internet websites and mobile applications. We collated the available resources with guidance from Children & Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) registrar.

Results:

We performed PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycles and in 1st cycle, questionnaire and signposting to applications were given to children over 11 years attending the epilepsy clinic. We identified that children were feeling sad and worried about epilepsy. Having found this, in cycle 2, we asked them if they preferred talking to someone and who that would be. They all preferred to speak to epilepsy nurses. Some families preferred not to talk about it and were happy with signposting. We engaged with the families throughout and taken their feedbacks into consideration.

Conclusion:

Based on the preliminary results we are putting forward a business case for recruiting a psychologist. Meanwhile we are signposting our young people to the applications which we compiled. We are continuing with our PDSA cycles and aiming for staff training and additional nursing time.