Assessing therapeutic intervention used by NHS Direct nurse advisers

The National Service Framework for Mental Health has identified NHS Direct as a "new point of access" to appropriate mental health services. Mental health calls account for approximately 4% of all calls received by NHS Direct but raise the greatest level of anxiety among advisers and take twice as long to deal with as other calls. In order to provide adequate advice, it is essential to ensure nurse advisers can deal with this type of call. As a first step in meeting these needs this short research article reports on the types of interventions deployed by 18 nurse advisers during role-plays with a mental health "client" expressing self-harm.