Mental health patients in crisis are facing “inhumane” conditions due to legal ambiguities, an investigation has found.
The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) revealed that A&E staff lack powers to prevent patients awaiting assessment or admission from leaving.
This forces doctors into a difficult choice, described by the HSSIB as selecting the “least harmful way to break the law”.
One consultant psychiatrist highlighted the “dilemma is stark” of unlawfully holding someone, breaching human rights, or allowing them to go.
Inspectors from the health safety watchdog saw a patient who had been locked in a single room, with only a toilet, for more than four days.
“It was not safe for staff to be in the room with them and it was not safe for the door to be unlocked as the patient kept attempting to leave and was desperate to end their life,” a new interim HSSIB report said.
“Staff described that the patient was not receiving any therapeutic intervention and it felt ‘cruel’ and ‘inhumane’ for them to be waiting so long for a bed when they were so mentally unwell.”
Nichola Crust, senior safety investigator at HSSIB, said: “Unclear legal powers don’t just create operational complications for care.
“They can have a devastating impact on patients, leaving them exposed to uncertainty, emotional distress and an increased risk of harm at a time when being as safe as possible is paramount.
“Without clear legal frameworks, staff repeatedly told us that they are placed in an impossible position when trying to keep people safe.”
The HSSIB has called on the Government to act to prevent staff from working in a “legal grey area”.
The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.