Building on Positive Experience: Developing, Implementing and Evaluating a Model for a Self Harm Clinic

This project built on a positive experience within a self harm team, of providing increased support to a service user who was frequently self harming. In collaboration with wider professional and service users, a team of nurses in Oxford have developed, implemented and evaluated a clinic to provide preventative and proactive support to people who frequently present at A&E following self harm and who are not currently receiving support from any services. Using an action research approach enabled the team to conduct a 12 month pilot of the clinic, developing the clinic in an ongoing way in response to discussions within the regular group supervision meetings for team members and with the project steering group.

All service users who attended at least one session showed a significant reduction in presentations at A&E six months post clinic as compared with the six months pre clinic. Although presentations at A&E is only one measure of self harming behaviour, such a reduction will result in a considerable cost saving to the health services. The team had hoped to be able to evaluate other outcomes for service users and to gain feedback about their experience of attending the clinic but this was more difficult to achieve. As many service users did not attend all the sessions, they did not complete the selected self-reporting scales pre and post clinic and the response rate to the postal experience questionnaire was very poor. The team have drawn learning from this pilot and are using this to inform future developments within the clinic.

This project was supported by the FoNS Practice Based Development and Research Programme in partnership with the General Nursing Council for England and Wales Trust.