La Casa Skills Day Event

Submitted by Matt Ehler, Administrator of La Casa MHRC

In February, La Casa had their second annual Skills Day for the nursing departments of all three program: the MHRC, MHUCC, and PHF.

This year the Skills Day was on 2/22 (1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.) and 2/23 (7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.) to cover all three shifts—AM, PM, and NOC—to help our nursing staff get their annual competencies. Additionally, it provided us an opportunity to cover any areas that may need special attention in a structured format. This year, there were 10 booths with the following topics:

1. Infection Control/Employee Health/Flu Vaccine (All)

2. Fire Safety and SDS (All)

3. Client Monitoring and Observation (All)

4. Vital Signs (All)

5. CPR/Chocking Prevention (All)

6. Emergency Procedures - Codes - CPI (All)

7. Head to Toe Assessment and Medication Safety/Destruction/Donation (Licensed staff)

8. Code Blue Documentation/Adverse Event Reporting (Licensed staff)

9. DTO/DTS/Elopement Risk Assessments (RNs)

10. Employee Handbook (All)

In order to staff the tables, we utilized a mixture of all staff including nursing staff and interns, HR, and department managers. In addition to the training benefit, it also allowed us the opportunity to reconnect with different staff members and work together as a campus. It was a great success and we trained about 120 staff members!

La Casa Implements a Modified Dialectical Behavior Therapy Track

In Long Beach, California, Telecare operates a Mental Health Rehabilitation Center (MHRC), a Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF), and a Mental Health Urgent Care Center (MHUCC) on one campus known as "La Casa".

As a background, some of Telecare’s consumers with a history of trauma or abuse can have maladaptive behaviors that lead to legal, social, and health-related challenges in the community. These consumers exist at all levels of care in California, from Full Service Partnership (FSP) and Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) programs all the way up to high-level locked programs such as La Casa MHRC. These behaviors can include, but are not limited to, self-injurious behaviors such as cutting, head banging, striking out, and drug seeking. Some of the problematic behaviors seen in these consumers are not always fully correctable with standard supportive therapy and medications.

For this reason, La Casa created a multidisciplinary committee in 2015 to create a strategic plan to implement a Modified Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) track in the MHRC, and some of its surrounding sister programs (La Casa PHF, La Paz Geropsychiatric Center, and the MHUCC). The program uses the term "Modified DBT" as the training and curriculum does not necessarily follow the traditional DBT format given that consumers have a concurrent serious and persistent mental illness and are often in an inpatient environment.

There is continued work being done at all of these programs, but La Casa is pleased  to report the first phase of the implementation is complete at the MHRC and selected consumers have finished the first eight-week cycle of treatment.