Transcript Slide 1

THE BEST POSSIBLE START
Harnessing Women’s Experiences of Maternity Services
Context: The Healthcare Quality Strategy
3 key quality dimensions:
Safe, Clinically Effective & Person-Centred
Improving person-centredness
 Identified priority areas for action include:
 Supporting staff, patients and carers to create partnerships
which result in shared decision making
 Informing and supporting people to maintain their health and
to manage ill health
 Improving and embedding patient reported outcomes and
experience across all NHS services
Improving the Care Experience
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It is important to guard against the rise of a
measurement industry that detaches
caregivers and frontline staff from patients and
their experiences by focusing too heavily on
quantitative measures and statistical
indicators”1
1 King’s
Fund Point of Care Programme:
Seeing the Person in the Patient (2009)
Improving the Care Experience
Instead a range of approaches is needed to gain a
better understanding of the care experience and to
inform priority areas for improvement.
Good Practice in Service User Involvement
in Maternity Services [SHC, 2010]
Recommendations
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Make better use of ‘static’ time
Make greater use of familiar technologies
Work more closely with third party providers
Use existing contacts with service users to widen
participation
Involvement opportunities reflect women’s experiences and
preferences
Provide meaningful feedback (quality of feedback as well
as number of tangible improvements)
Using Maternity Service User Experiences Examples from Practice
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Neonatal Jaundice & Phototherapy Treatment – using
service user experience to inform the business case for
new equipment procurement [NHS Orkney]
Lifestyle Information – service user pre-questionnaire
and feedback on the ‘Big Bump’ DVD [NHS Lanarkshire]
Breastfeeding Support Groups – using service user
experiences to inform improvements and location choice
[Various Health Boards]
Harnessing Experience
“The most important barriers to implementing changes as
a result of patient feedback are defensiveness from
clinical staff and a lack of a patient-centred culture”
Building on the Experiences of NHS Boards, Patient Perspective
Better Together: Scotland’s Patient Experience Programme, Nov 2008
o Listening to the stories of those involved at all levels in health care
is essential in overcoming these barriers
o Stories underscore the importance of understanding each person
in the wider context of his or her life
o And can offer a less direct call to action – actively involving
listeners in co-creation of an idea and giving them space to think
Key Challenges
o How to integrate story work into every day practice in busy
local care settings?
o How to develop and personalise approaches?
o How to create a safe and supportive environment that
encourages seeking and responding to feedback?
Introducing Emotional Touch points
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Touch points are the moments where the user interacts with
the service, or aspects of the service
The aim is to identify critical moments that have shaped the
experience overall
Service users are invited to identify touch points that identify the
best part of the experience or the worst
They can add a touch point if it is missing from the presented
‘care journey’
Users are then invited to pick an emotion (word or image) that
best describes how they felt at that point
Introducing Emotional Touch Points
Introducing Emotional Touch Points
The service user is then:
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Invited to say why they felt this way
Invited to say what could have been different, if appropriate
Given the typed up story of the experience to review and
change as required
The approach has been used:
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To capture outpatient and community care experiences
retrospectively in the context of Experience Based Design
[NHSIII; Bate and Robert, 2007]
To gather experiences in ‘real time’ in a diverse range of
inpatient care settings
[Leadership in Compassionate Care programme, NHS Lothian and Napier University]
Introducing Emotional Touch Points
Identified benefits include:
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Helping service users to get in touch with their own experience
Challenging assumptions about what matters
Developing relationships between service users and staff
Helping to see positive and negative aspects of experiences
Supporting service user and family involvement in service
improvements
Redressing the power imbalance between interviewer and
service user
Dewar B et al (2009): Use of emotional touchpoints as a method of tapping into
The experience of receiving compassionate care in a hospital setting.
J Research Nursing 15(1) 29-41
Reflecting on Experience
Reflecting on Experience
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Focus on both positive and negative experiences at all levels
of influence
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Focus on experienced reality Vs factual reality
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Focus on common and divergent issues
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Think about the ‘hidden’ factors influencing the experience at
each level, both human and organisational
Reflecting on Experience
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Sense-making – individual perceptions e.g. “you’re treated
differently because you’re on methadone” Vs “took extra care of
me because of my history of depression”
Impact of other service users e.g. feeling bad about being put
with mothers actively using drugs in post-natal ward Vs “I forgot
how to bath my baby – another patient showed me how”
Interpersonal interaction with staff e.g. “She asked my
permission even though I was half out of it ” Vs “she wasn’t
bothered about me, I was just told what was to happen”
Reflecting on Experience
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Local team / care setting: e.g. antenatal class times, mum not
allowed into pre-labour ward during ‘partner’ visits, limited postnatal ward orientation, unable to accommodate visits by
Chinese family who worked unsocial hours, unable to obtain
halal meat
Interagency working: e.g. sharing out of date information,
communication about / management of transitions
Wider context: resource issues, access and waiting times,
education, governance, culture
Source of examples:
Equalities in Health. Inequalities Sensitive Practice Initiative. Analysis of the Maternity
Services User Engagement Survey. Final Report
Harnessing Experience
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There needs to be a strong connection between story and
action
Start with the areas of direct influence
Recognise areas of good practice and think about how these
could happen more often
Try to genuinely understand why negative experiences have
occurred and what could be done to reduce these
Pull out key messages and (where necessary) turn into positive
‘best practice’ statements
Develop action plans for change
Feedback changes made – check responses resonate with
service users
Karen Barrie
National Development Manager (Story Work)
Better Together Programme
Scottish Government
[email protected]
Mobile: 07756 778271