As it happens, we have been grappling with the same issues as Curwen & Jebreel, Reference Curwen and Jebreel1 namely low rates of documented action taken in relation to driving risk in our crisis resolution team. We would like to share the approach we arrived at, which might inspire others.
As was indeed suggested by Curwen & Jebreel, we did place a poster regarding the guidelines for driving with psychiatric illness in our team’s work space, and repeatedly discussed the issue at team meetings. Unfortunately, this did not make much difference and documented action remained near zero. More successful was indicating driving status as part of the patient’s details on our overview boards and including a simple screening tool in the admission pack. This pack is used by practitioners at first assessment and the tool simply looks at the three general domains of psychiatric illness covered in the guidelines: (1) depression, anxiety; (2) psychosis, hypomania, mania; (3) dementia. The rater needs to broadly rate each of these domains, assigning each a colour: green – low risk and no action needed, amber – sufficient risks present to refer for a medical opinion, red – risks are overwhelmingly clear and driving needs to stop immediately.
In the case that driving needs to stop, a letter is available in the admission pack, written on behalf of the unit, explaining the need to do so.
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