Headline Messages
- Thalamos is not a decision support tool. It is an administration tool for completing your SRF and certificate. You make the decision about what you are approving and the certificate you are completing.
- You should preview your forms and make sure all the data is as you expect it to be before submitting. Particularly as you get used to the service.
- We do not currently have a T4 or T5. If you need a T4 or T5, you should complete these certificates and your SRF via alternative means. In the highly unusual situation of a CTO where the request is for ECT, this is not supported by Thalamos or by the legal wording of the CTO11, so you will need to seek advice form Principal SOAD or the SOAD admin team.
- Please check that you are not using Internet Explorer as Thalamos does not support this browser.
To access Thalamos you will need to go to our website http://www.thalamos.co.uk. Click Log In, and under 'Thalamos Version 1', click the Log In button next to 'Doctor, SOAD & AMHP'.
Landing Page
You no longer have to complete an assessment in one sitting, if you complete part of an assessment it will appear here as an in progress assessment. You can search by request ID or patient name.
Beginning a new Assessment and completing the sections
Begin your assessment by clicking Begin new assessment. When starting an assessment, you will need the Request ID and Patient name as minimum to be able to save a draft assessment.
You can use the SOAD Notes tab to take rough notes throughout your assessment. This works by open tab > type in info > close tab. This fulfils the same function as writing things down on the back of the SRF. The information in this tab will be shared with the CQC but not the provider.
The first section is patient and assessment details. You need to determine whether the request was for ECT, medication or both - the decision will give different questions about ECT as you proceed through.
Once you have completed a section you can choose whether to Save as a Draft or Save and Continue.
When you have completed the first section you will see a list of the different sections to complete. – these make up the entirety of the SRF form. They can be completed in any order, but all must be completed to establish a complete SRF before a certificate can be selected and completed. A section is considered complete once you have used the Save and Continue Button and will appear green.
Diagnosis & History
The information input into this box will be recorded on the SRF. If you would like to copy this information into the ‘Reasons’ portion of your certificate – which you can then edit when you get there - you can tick the green box which appears immediately below.
Current and Proposed treatment
You should first record the current treatment at the time of your visit – purely what is happening when you are there.
You can then record what the AC is proposing, or if it is different. You can write up to 32000 characters.
Consultee details
Please read the disclaimer at the top of the page. This is because consultees appear in different orders on different forms and the associated wording is inconsistent. So if you don’t enter in the correct order, you might have to come back and change it later.
SOAD authorisation.
Everything up to this point has been information gathering. This is the part where you actually detail what you are going to approve. You have four options:
AC’s – if the description is blank, it will be blocked. Recap of the treatment plans:
- The current treatment at time of visit
- The ACs proposed plan
- Something different, where you must explain why it is different
- Or nothing at all. This will record a ‘null certificate’ - i.e. you are not issuing a certificate, and you are explaining why.
If approving something different, you should detail everything in the current treatment at time of visit, the ACs proposed plan - and then detail why it is different in the fields provided.
Once you’ve decided what you are approving, you select the consent status of the patient.
Admin and documentation
Record if any revisitsd were needed, if a section 61 is needed, if you have any safeguarding concerns and whether a further second opinion is required.
Selecting a Certificate
The SRF is completed when all the green boxes are highlighted. Please make sure these are correct as there is no decision making here, it is chosen by you.
You will only be able to choose which certificate you wish to proceed with when all sections of the SRF are completed.
You can choose individual certificates, or certificates in combination depending on your assessment.
Click on the certificate to complete it. The relevant points from different section like patient name, consultee details etc will pre-populate. If these need changing, you must go and change these in the the SRF. Your details, such as name and address, come from your profile – in order to change these you need to update your profile.
If you complete the SRF, choose a certificate, partially complete the certificate and then change something in the SRF – that will remove the information you entered into the certificate. This is because it’s difficult for the system to know whether the changes you make affects the decision about which certificate is appropriate, and the decision is yours, not the app’s.
Authorisation
Make sure that the portion of the certificate which records your authorisation is as you want it to appear on the final issued certificate, i.e. appropriate descriptors of medicines etc
Reasons
You can, as stated earlier, transfer the diagnosis & history elements of the SRF into the ‘Reasons’ portion of the certificate, then edit and add to your reasons so that they are as you wish them to appear on the final certificate.
Previewing
Make sure you preview your forms before sending - just to make sure the information is as you expect before sending. You can still edit at this point.
At this point it will be unsigned and undated. The last page will be any notes from the notes page.
If for some reason the process needs to be continued on paper, you can download it and sign by hand.
Submitting the Assessment
Sending the assessment applies your signature to the forms. The details for the provider may be in the auto-complete feature where you start typing. If the details of the provider you want to send it to are not there, you can enter the name and an email address manually.
This must be an NHS or approved provider email address - no sending to gmail accounts! (Get in touch if you are trying to send it somewhere and it isn’t letting you, and we can add them.)
If unsuccessful you will get a warning message.
Once sent, you can access in the archive if you need to reference or resend. Assessments can't be edited once submitted. If you need to edit, you should complete a new assessment. You can copy and paste data from a downloaded assessment to speed things up. You should not download and amend in ink.
If you do reissue an assessment, you should detail this fact in the ‘Reasons’ of the new assessment before issuing it, and include a note as to what the original issue date was, because that needs to be clearly recorded since your re-issue will carry the new date of issue.
You can also download if needed by previewing at any point. If you preview and download before sending, no signature will be applied to the form.
Archive
From here you can view, download, resend or delete. You should keep archive hygiene and stay on top of deleting these. The CQC will retain a copy securely in its systems for any future references.
For further guidance please see the video below: