Interventions to improve emergency department use for mental health reasons: protocol for a mixed-methods systematic review.

Background: Healthcare resources are limited and unnecessary, and inappropriate emergency department use is now a highly visible healthcare priority. Individuals visiting the emergency department for mental health-related reasons are often amongst the most frequent presenters. In response, researchers and clinicians have created interventions to streamline emergency department use and several primary studies describe the effects of these interventions.

Exploring the Experiences of Persons Who Frequently Visit the Emergency Department for Mental Health-Related Reasons.

In this qualitative study, the experiences of persons who frequently visit the emergency department (ED) for mental health-related reasons were explored. Interpretive Description guided the design, and data were collected through interviews with 10 adults who made 12+ ED visits within a 1-year time frame (2015). Thematic analysis was used to analyze data inductively.

Convergence and divergence: An analysis of mechanical restraints.

Background: Psychiatric nurses are regularly confronted with the uses and effects of control interventions such as mechanical restraints. Although there are evident tensions in the literature regarding the use of mechanical restraints, very little research has focused on the lived and embodied experience of their use, whether from the patient's perspective or the perspective of nursing staff responsible for their application.

Research Aims: (1) to gain access to the bodily phenomenon of being placed in mechanical restraints; (2) to give voice to the intimate experiential understanding of this experience; and (3) through phenomenological interpretation, to understand the subjective processes and meaning-making of this experience.

Medicaid Reimbursement for the Female Condom.

Objectives: To examine state-level female condom use through Medicaid from 2004 to 2014, because in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed for expanded Medicaid coverage in many states, extending requirements for contraceptive care to more of the poorest women in the United States and to most women with private insurance.

Methods: We collected data via brief survey of Medicaid offices in all 50 states between March 2015 and March 2016.

Results: The number of states providing Medicaid reimbursement for the female condom increased 33% (from 25 to 36) since 2007.

Improving access to acute mental health services in a general hospital.

Background: There is a paucity of service research on the effectiveness of short-term mental health clinics.

Aims: To outline the development of the Urgent Consultation Clinic (UCC), an inter-professional, short-term, mental health program in a general hospital, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the UCC from a quality improvement perspective.

Method: Participants (n = 143) completed a battery of validated measures assessing psychological and physical symptoms, quality of life, life satisfaction, and satisfaction with services at three time-points.