Jamie Herrick

• Assessment of mental health needs.
• Crisis Counseling
• Recommendations to GP for treatment options
• Triaging admissions for Psychiatric Clinic
• Communicating with nurses, Correctional Officers, Management, and external stakeholders about management plans, risks of behaviours linked to the illness, and engagement of the Mental Health ACT to enforce treatment as necessary.

• Case allocation each shift
• Managing difficult/complex client groups
• Established relationships with Private Psychiatrists and made clinical decisions based on risk and articulating clearly the issue for a more informed decision to be made by the psychiatrist.
• Implementation of group work for individuals with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. (group size of 30-35 people)
• Orientation to new staff that included day-to-day workings in their role and expectations of data collection for funding purposes.

• Overseeing clinical practice of nurses.
• Management of complex clients and ensuring clear communication lines between treating team, consumer and family
• Monitoring compliance to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) guidelines in a Medication Clinic which oversaw provision of treatment requiring weekly and monthly reviews with evidence provided to lead pharmacist and the TGA to maintain individuals on a very specific type of medication.
• Undertaking root cause analysis of report submitted via the Safety Learning System (SLS) database to manage, investigate and analyse patient and worker incidents as well as consumer feedback.

Summary of Role

This was a 3 year Pilot Project implemented to minimise the engagement of Emergency Services out of hours where normally there was no access for a home visit from Community Mental Health Services. It included appropriate assessment, risk management and crisis intervention strategies with intent that referrals are sent to community mental health services or that we attend a home visit out of hours and provide support necessary to stabilise the situation.

It also required submission of accurate data to enable the Committee overseeing this project to evaluate the success of this role and whether it was financially and clinically viable to continue the out of hours service.

• Initiated care plan and actualized appropriate interventions and treatment.
• Collaborated with physicians and interdisciplinary teams to devise and manage individualized plans of care.
• Interacted effectively with department managers to promptly correct problems and improve services.
• Evaluated nursing staff's performance and developed education programs and professional development opportunities to improve individual and team competencies, clinical knowledge and delivery of care.
• Oversaw the introduction of Peer Support Workers (PSW) on the Unit. It required education of staff on role and function of the PSW, discovering opportunities to engage them with consumers and the evaluation of the PSW role with ongoing education and support to change historical practices to ensure we were in line with contemporary practices.

• Resulted in provision of evidence to management of changes in rostering practices that has led to the Nursing Budget being on target for the financial year of 2002-2003
• Developed and managed projects in conjunction with the Clinical Information Unit that links with the National Standards of Mental Health Services in providing evidence of our bed waiting times
• Member of South Australian Rostering and Clinical Systems Committee. At this level we reviewed current IT platforms, the recommendations for enhancement of the software and discussions of our local work practices. We also discussed Nursing Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (NEBA) and ensured we were complaint with meeting targeted rostering requirements established under legislation of the NEBA.
• Working relationships were extensive due to reporting up as required by SA Health as well as engaging staff on unit levels to ensure they were providing appropriate data into their clinical systems to ensure accuracy in our reporting.
• I oversaw multiple local committees of reviewing current standards of practice and submissions of changes where the information within the clinical systems were not aligned to current practice standards.
• Member of Nursing Hours Per Patient Day committee and Rostering Sub-committee which examines the impact on reporting when considering changes in the nurse rostering and care planning systems accepted by DHS
• Policy development built from the national Standards for Mental Health Services around documentation
• Reviewed function of Nursing Information Systems and successfully put forward proposal to increase FTE in accordance with the identified functions.