Risk assessment and management-a busy practitioner's perspective

Abstract

Risk assessment and management are an integral and unavoidable part of clinical practice. Research has suggested that clinicians are less accurate than actuarial instruments in predicting future violence. This paper argues that there is more to clinical risk assessment than a one-off prediction. Different steps in clinical risk assessment and management are outlined. Ways forward are suggested to improve clinical practice. These include a need for clinical risk assessments to be informed by good research findings and, where appropriate, to use actuarial instruments as adjuncts. They also include a need to understand and tackle the individual pressures and pressures within the system that hinder effective risk assessment and management.