The ‘New Ways of Working in Mental Health’ initiative was set up jointly by the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE), the Department of Health and the Royal College of Psychiatrists following several years of murmurs of discontent from consultant psychiatrists. Kendell & Pearce (Reference Kendell and Pearce1997) had identified reasons for consultant vacancies and premature retirement by surveying over 100 consultant psychiatrists between 1995 and 1996. Rathod et al (Reference Rathod, Roy and Ramsay2000) had found frequent reports of anxiety and depressive symptoms in psychiatrists related to the stress of working in psychiatry. An audit in London had revealed exceptionally large case-loads of community consultant psychiatrists (Reference Tyrer, Al Muderis and GulbrandsenTyrer et al, 2001).

Consultants have portrayed themselves as unattractive role models to junior doctors due to struggling with long hours, multiple demands, risk management and ‘little time to practice the art of psychiatry’ (Reference ColganColgan, 2002). However, there have been some success stories, for example Hampson's (Reference Hampson2003) restructured job plan in keeping with the new consultant role described by Kennedy & Griffiths (Reference Kennedy and Griffiths2001) who interviewed general adult psychiatrists to reveal emerging new roles for consultants in the climate of risk avoidance as well as reasons why others were unable to make similar changes to their work. The authors identified three types of consultant role: traditional, adapted traditional and the new role. The traditional consultant has an overwhelming number of out-patients on his books, whereas the new consultant has a low number of weekly follow-ups that are mostly reviews with keyworkers. With a greater degree of delegation, consultants are reported to be able to more rapidly support and supervise other mental health professionals dealing with emergencies.

The focus of New Ways of Working is primarily on consultant psychiatrists, but if implemented will inevitably involve the whole multidisciplinary team. The initiative concerns supporting and enabling consultants to deliver effective and person-centred care. It attempts to address dissatisfaction, burnout, and difficulties in retaining and recruiting staff in psychiatry by radically changing the role of the consultant through promoting distributed responsibility and allowing doctors to act as consultants to multidisciplinary teams. Not everyone is comfortable with the newer emerging roles as described in New Ways of Working for Psychiatrists (Department of Health, 2005). Ingram & Tacchi (Reference Ingram and Tacchi2004) identify reasons for some of the barriers to accepting distribution of responsibility, including opposition to the cultural shift in medicine towards non-medical disciplines taking over roles that a traditional consultant would have otherwise assumed.

The core aims of New Ways of Working are making effective use of the skills of consultant psychiatrists for those service users with the most complex needs, to allow consultants to act in a consultative role, and to deliver interventions that are timely rather than routine. One way of assessing time spent in direct clinical care against these standards is to examine the activity of consultants in general adult out-patient clinics. Once New Ways of Working is implemented ‘routine’ follow-ups would be expected to decline or possibly be eliminated. The aim of this service-mapping exercise was to attempt to identify and define what takes place within general adult out-patient clinics. Routine and infrequent appointments have been used as a proxy measure, admittedly imperfect, of the inappropriate use of consultant time on non-complex interventions that could have been delivered by another professional.

Method

The setting of this service-mapping exercise is Rotherham Mental Health Service in South Yorkshire, which is part of Doncaster and South Humber Healthcare NHS Trust. The trust has identified several ways in which New Ways of Working is to be implemented and is part of the national pilot for the initiative. There are eight general adult consultants covering a population of around 250 000. A data collection tool was designed to be as objective as possible in capturing the type of clinical activity and case-load in general adult out-patients in keeping with New Ways of Working. This tool was presented at a clinical effectiveness meeting, providing an opportunity for feedback and amendments. Criteria were agreed and a modified version was used for data collection (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Results of data collection

	n (%)
Months since last appointment
<1	4 (2.7)
1-3	61 (40.7)
> 3-5	33 (22)
> 5-8	34 (22.7)
> 8	18 (12)
Appointment brought forward/urgent	4 (2.7)
Appointment requested by patient, carer or worker	6 (4)
Diagnosis
Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders	39 (26)
Depression	79 (52.7)
Bipolar disorder	13 (8.7)
Neurosis	8 (5.3)
Stress-related and somatoform disorders	1 (0.7)
Eating disorders	2 (1.3)
Disorders of adult personality	5 (3.3)
Other	5 (3.3)
Years of contact with services
<1	18 (12)
1-5	55 (36.7)
> 5	77 (51.3)
Patient has a non-medical care coordinator	55 (36.7)
Management plan
Review of diagnosis	2 (1.3)
Review of medication
No change	89 (59.3)
Change in dose	28 (18.7)
Change of drug	24 (16)
Physical healthcare intervention	27 (18)
Psychological intervention	11 (7.3)
Social intervention	8 (5.3)
Referral to community mental health team	3 (2)
Monitoring of risk	23 (15.3)
Admission to ward	0 (0)
Discharge from case-load	1 (0.7)
Mental Health Act assessment	1 (0.7)
Months before next appointment
<1	4 (2.7)
1-3	60 (40)
> 3-5	50 (33.3)
> 5-8	27 (18)
> 8	10 (6.7)

Data collection was by retrospective case-note analysis of notes prepared for a forthcoming clinic. The last documented clinic session was the point of reference for data collection. Out-patient notes for six out of eight consultant teams were examined using the data collection tool as the notes for two consultant teams were prepared off-site and therefore excluded for convenience. New patient appointments were excluded since the primary focus was on ‘routine follow-up’ cases. The possible outcomes and interventions listed in the management plan in Table 1 are not mutually exclusive (i.e. each patient could have received one or more interventions).

Results

A total of 150 case notes prepared for general adult out-patient clinics between November 2005 and January 2006 were examined. The majority of patients (57%) had their previous appointment more than 3 months ago and 58% were being followed-up more than 3 months later.

A breakdown of care programme approach (CPA) levels revealed the following: 40% of patients were not on CPA, 44% were on standard CPA and 16% were on enhanced level. In terms of interventions and activity during the appointment, 59% of patients had no changes made to their medication and 51% had no changes made to their care plan.

Discussion

Defining what makes a case routine, complex or urgent is not straightforward. These concepts are not constant and may fluctuate during the course of a patient's condition. However, we believe that regular appointments that are 3 months or more apart do not suggest urgency. Features such as standard or no CPA level and lack of objective clinical activity imply low complexity. These parameters are by no means perfect, but when considered together allow us to provide an estimate for the proportion of cases that might not have required consultant time.

The results of this service-mapping exercise suggest that only a small proportion of work taking place in adult out-patient follow-up clinics could be classified as complex. The majority of patients were either not on CPA or were on standard level. It is notable that around half the sample (51%) had no changes made to their care plan whatsoever, which raises the possibility that a consultant review might not have been required.

Only 3% of patients were seen on an urgent basis. This figure reflects those appointments brought forward for clinical need where there was documentation to this effect. However, we appreciate this may be an underestimate of the true number. It is possible that patients are not seen sooner owing to non-urgent patients blocking clinics or perhaps urgent patients are being more appropriately directed to other teams, such as the crisis resolution and home treatment team.

One weakness of this study, as with all retrospective case-note analyses, is the reliance on adequate recording and clinical documentation. Consultant appointments may offer something that is valuable to the patient, or indeed to the service, but this has proved difficult to measure objectively and is hence unlikely to be looked upon sympathetically by commissioners of services. It has been assumed that medication and mental state were reviewed routinely as these are basic functions of an out-patient clinic, however, these are not always documented. Moreover, interventions such as supportive counselling may well have been delivered more frequently without being documented, but we would still question whether such an intervention would require a consultant. In addition, we appreciate that reviewing the entry of a single appointment does not reveal the full complexity of a case. This could be better gained from a review of the whole case record. Also, the authors acknowledge that neither patient nor carer views have been taken into account in the discussion of the potential implications of this study on consultant clinic lists.

Suggestions for future work include obtaining the clinician's response as to whether the clinical activity could have been performed by another professional and the duration of the appointment as included in an out-patient clinic audit tool from one pilot site (Department of Health, 2005). However, disadvantages with the latter tool are that it is time-consuming because it requires several participating clinicians and needs to be filled in during the clinic, and its lack of parameters that attempt to capture complexity and urgency.

In conclusion, consultants will be increasingly required to reflect on their practice in order to ensure they work more efficiently and that their skills are directed at the more acute, complex and high-risk cases. We suggest that this study supports the contention that follow-up clinics in their existing form are an inefficient use of consultant time and hence in need of a radical overhaul along the lines of the New Ways of Working initiative.

Declaration of interest

The Doncaster and South Humber Healthcare Trust is one of the consultant development sites for New Ways of Working.