Estimating the link between service-user patient safety perceptions, incidents and subsequent contagion in acute mental health wards.

Background: Safety incidents are common in adult acute inpatient mental health services, and detrimental to all. Incidents spread via social contagion within the ward, but social contagion is difficult to quantify. Better measures of social contagion could support a milieu in which safety incidents are less likely to be prolonged, spread, or repeated, with widespread benefits.

A service-user digital intervention to collect real-time safety information on acute, adult mental health wards: the WardSonar mixed-methods study.

Background: Acute inpatient mental health services report high levels of safety incidents. The application of patient safety theory has been sparse, particularly concerning interventions that proactively seek patient perspectives.

Objective(s): Develop and evaluate a theoretically based, digital monitoring tool to collect real-time information from patients on acute adult mental health wards about their perceptions of ward safety.