Staffing
Since one of the primary purposes of this Quality Assurance Plan (QAP) is to provide high-quality treatment for people with mental disorders, it is necessary to pay close attention to recruiting talented psychologists and psychiatrists. Several funders and the program’s developers finance this QAP; therefore, standards related to staffing are established by both sponsors and creators. These standards include the following: all specialists should have appropriate education and be licensed as psychologists or psychiatrists. The careful examination of recommendation letters from past employers will allow developers to ensure that the staff members have the appropriate experience and required qualifications.
According to this plan, the potential employees need to have at least three years of work experience in their specialty. Three years of experience is enough because this program is aimed at showing people that contemporary medicine seeks new effective ways of treatment and should involve young employees with modern views on solving problems. Thus, all staff members should have education, a license, and at least three years of work experience.
As for recruiting staff and their ongoing training on new policies, this QAP offers a wide range of necessary actions. To be employed, candidates have to pass an interview and probation. During the interview, it is essential to ensure that the employees are incredibly polite, tolerant, communicable, and responsible. The selected workers should be involved in various training that contributes to acquiring and consolidating the skills required for the staff to solve all possible problems of patients. Employees must understand that their primary task is also to protect the patient’s rights and convince them that no one will violate their boundaries. The main commandment of any doctor claims: “Do no harm,” in psychology, it strongly echoes one of the biblical teachings, interpreted as: «Do not force the person’s will” (The Holy Bible, 2020, Gen. 3:22).
As for professional opportunities, workers will regularly take refresher courses, positively impacting their experience and salaries. Every month it will be necessary to collect statics on all employees’ achievements to oversee their work. Therefore, the qualification of the staff is the fundamental base for the successful implementation of the QAP.
Interventions
Standards in the area of interventions also come from funders, and several are self-set. These standards assume that chosen interventions will help strengthen the psyche of patients and will not harm them. To ensure that the interventions are appropriate for the target audience, developers studied the statics of mental disorders’ prevalence and research related to contemporary treatment methods and the refusal of patients to see a doctor.
This QAP involves two large areas: treating people with mental disorders and persuading those who have insomnia, constant anxiety, and stress to see a specialist. Therefore, part of the effort will be aimed at finding and providing practical ways of healing. This plan offers to pay attention to such psychological interventions as gratitude and optimistic ones to show patients that their situations are not desperate and avoid the onset of depression. In addition, QAP also focuses on the strength-building measure, which “refers to internal capacities and values” to persuade people to fight their disorder (Chowdhury, 2021, para. 45).
Another direction of effort will involve creative managers and create a kind of advertising campaign to convince people with insomnia or anxiety to consult a specialist. Internet advertisement as a leading type of service promotion will describe the groundlessness of people’s fears of a psychological clinic and become the primary tool to help those who did not dare ask for it. Thus, the interventions are carefully selected in strict accordance with the goals set.
As for needs assessment, it is implemented due to statistics and surveys of people. Pilot testing is not necessary; however, research on modern psychology and psychiatry interventions must be used. To define the outcome evaluation, this QAP assumes the need to compare the statistics before the plan’s implementation and the statistics which will have place after half a year. This comparison should be conducted in two directions: the condition of patients and their number. It is essential to understand that an increase in the number of patients does not indicate a worsening of the situation. On the contrary, it will show that more people come for professional help and refuse self-medication, which can have dire consequences.
Interventions cannot remain unchanged for a long time: they require regular adaptations. In this QAP, there are several planned adaptations, which are implemented before introducing interventions. For instance, the existing interventions to induce optimism are modified to avoid forcing patients to pretend that everything is okay and just run away from the problem. Since psychology studies the most individual part of a person and people react differently to specific actions, it is necessary to monitor which interventions cause an improvement in patients. If some methods do not lead to a result, they should also be adapted.
Despite all adapting, it is essential to stay true to the core elements of the interventions. For this, it is planned to hold regular meetings to identify the current results of the program and possible deviations from the planned actions. Therefore, correctly implemented interventions are another pillar of the program, along with recruiting quality staff.
References
Chowdhury, M. R. (2021). 19 best positive psychology interventions + how to apply them. PositivePsychology. Web.
The Holy Bible: Literal standard version. (2020). Covenant Press.