Supporting a psychiatric hospital culture of safety.

Background: Concerns for patient safety have risen to the forefront of health care, including mental health care. Safe patient care depends, to a large extent, on high functioning teams, yet team training is lacking in basic professional training programs. To address the need for team training, one psychiatric hospital adopted the Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety program (TeamSTEPPS).

Supporting clinical leaders in achieving organisational change.

Clinical leaders in nursing may feel stuck in the middle of conflicting demands from the various members of their organisation and patients' needs. The LEO programme aims to help these clinical leaders identify their problems, agree action plans and ask for the support they need in bringing about positive change in their workplace.

Developing middle managers.

BOTH THE NURSING strategy for the NHS in England (DoH 1999 ) and the NHS Plan (DoH 2000 ) identify the importance of clinical and managerial leadership to the success of the government's modernisation agenda.