Let’s talk about users’ rights – Mental Health

At the GHU Paris psychiatry and neurosciences, a mobile psycho-educational workshop “users’ rights” moves around the units.

For the past two years, every Tuesday, for one hour, a psychoeducational workshop “Users’ rights” has been offered to a small group of four to ten patients from one of the intra-hospital units of pole 15 of the GHU Paris psychiatry and neurosciences. The opportunity for users to ask all the questions that are important to them, and more generally to be informed about their fundamental rights in the hospital. Resulting from a team reflection in view of complex situations during confinement, this project is carried out by the nurse coordinator of therapeutic patient education (ETP) and the peer health mediator (MSP) of the center.

In practice, these two workers plan the holding of a workshop in advance with the receiving unit. The health manager and a member of the care team of this unit, who will join the facilitators that day, inform the patients and invite them to participate. The workshop starts with a tour de table which notably allows the ETP coordinator and the MSP to specify their functions and suggest topics. They insist on the fact that patients are free to ask all the questions they want and that answers will be provided, during the group or, if this is not possible, later. They also undertake to report problems to management and medical teams. The subjects frequently discussed are the modalities of care without consent, the operating rules of closed units, the conditions of hospitalization, communication with the doctor and caregivers, visits, etc.

At the end of the workshop, a satisfaction questionnaire is given to the users, relating to the evaluation of the usefulness of the themes, the quality of the information provided and the legal points on which more communication should be made. We observe that this proposal creates a link and opens up perspectives. On the patients’ side, the presence of “third parties” outside the unit offers an additional space for discussion, answering questions, raising communication difficulties. On the side of caregivers, it allows to decenter the gaze, to hear the words of patients from another angle and to question certain professional practices.

Proposed to 2022 Psychiatric Care Team Awardthis initiative appears as a “coup de coeur” of the jury.

Contact : Stéphane Cognon, MSP, [email protected]

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