In partnership with the Patient Experience Network
Note from Ruth Evans
Hello and welcome to our October edition of our PENLetter. With 5 editions under our belt, we are now settling into the swing of our newsletter; thank you so much for all your positive feedback and comments. We are really keen to reflect all the great initiatives and work that is going on around patient experience, and welcome your views on what to include, and of course if you have news that you would like to be shared, please let us know. Last month we included a request for input on behalf of a member and several readers shared their thoughts. Thank you for taking the time to comment – I know it was appreciated. Don’t forget the deadline has been extended until 8th November for the PEN National Awards 2013 – so please do let us have your submissions soon if you are planning to enter. This is a unique opportunity to recognise the great work your teams are doing. At our Awards and Best Practice Conference this year, Jane Cummings will be one of our Key Note speakers! As always please do let us have your feedback and comments. Ruth This month’s case study
Pharmacy Case Study – Improving Patient Information and Involvement Central Manchester Foundation Trust consists of six specialist hospitals where we treat more than one million patients every year. Patients have a wide range of medical and surgical needs and come from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Empowered and informed patients can take responsibility for their medicines choices. This project aims to encourage medicines adherence and prevent re-admission due to inappropriate or inadvertent use of medicines. The patient and their direct need for information are key within this project. Subsequent tackling of the CQUIN targets relating to patient experience is an added bonus. The results from the National In-patient Survey highlighted that patients perceive they are not fully informed about their medicines, including information relating to side-effects. It was clear that we needed to alter the method by which we provided this information about medicines as patients, when surveyed, obviously perceived that we were not providing sufficient drug-related advice. Within the Medicines Information (MI) Department, a Pharmacy Medicines Helpline is provided for patients who are discharged with medicines. We aim to capture patients who have additional queries or seek additional advice relating to their discharge medicines when they get home. A large proportion of the calls we receive from patients are related to adverse effects. The MI Dept was therefore identified as having an important role in the reactive provision of information. In an attempt to improve our proactive provision of information relating to medicines within our Trust, a multidisciplinary approach was deemed necessary. The MI manager and Lead Nursing staff began a project to improve patient perception on the provision of medicines information. Please click here to view the case study table The provision of medicines information to patients is now a focus for all healthcare professionals. There are already specialist pharmacists developing patient counselling tools for their specific clinical areas. Training and counselling competency packs have been developed for key areas where departmental audit has highlighted a deficient area in patient counselling. Education of patients is an important strategy in effective medicines optimisation.
This is a unique project which involved a multi-disciplinary approach to proactive provision of medicines information. The project was developed with the QIPP agenda at its forefront. We aim to ensure the patient receives quality information in an appropriate way, using techniques which have not been employed elsewhere, advancing collaborative working among the MDT, to prevent harm to the patient through inappropriate use of medicines on non-adherence to prescribed regimes. Key Learning The roll out of this project in a Trust this size has had it difficulties. Engaging large numbers of staff across multiple sites has logistically been problematic. It is advisable in the early stages of the project to ensure you have all relevant parties on board. The project became not only about providing information proactively to patients; the tools with which to do this have become integral to ensuring good discharge practice, alongside medicines safety and governance. Anticipation of how the tools can be adapted to other UK Trusts should account for any local needs in these areas in advance as this may speed up the process of eventual implementation. Tools which have the potential to be shared and adapted for other Trusts included a Pharmacy Admissions Leaflet which explains to the patient more about medicines during their hospital stay, and the Core Discharge Checklist. This is a simple ten point checklist which covers the key pieces of information which need to be provided to a patient to ensure patients are safely discharge with medicines. There are accompanying educational packages associated with this Checklist. Latest NEWS about Patient ExperiencePatient Stories – The Role They Play in Decision Making
Local News
NHS Medway Break the Record! NHS Medway received a record number of nominations for The WOW! Awards in June 2013. 223 customers took the time to nominate people at NHS Medway from whom they had received outstanding patient service. This is a record number of nominations in one month for any organisation using the WOW! Awards and reflects the continued efforts at Medway to improve on the patient experience.
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PEN National Awards
Deadline Extension! Due to so many requests from a large amount of teams this year, it has been decided that there will be an extension to the deadline for the PEN National Awards 2013. We are aware there have been several obstacles for teams getting their entries in before the 11th October deadline, and so the decision has been made to extend by four weeks. Phew! Although this is undoubtedly a big relief please do not wait until the last minute, and do submit your great initiatives as soon as possible. We will make sure we showcase these for you, and give your teams the limelight they deserve. Unfortunately we cannot extend any further than this so please do ensure you are able to collate your work and enter in time for the new deadline. We hope this gives everyone enough time to submit their work. If you have already submitted but feel you would like to amend your entry given the longer time frame, please contact us and we will assist you with this. If you have any questions or require further assistance with entering please do not hesitate to contact Alma Sheren on 10223 911988 or alma@awardsinternational.eu. Important Dates: Extended Deadline Date: Friday 8th November Extended Finalist Announcement: Friday 6th December Awards Day and Best Practice Conference: Wednesday 5th February (No Change!) To book your place at the event, please email Alma: alma@awardsinternational.euor call: 01223 911988
Events
One to make you smile
News From Overseas:
Using Interior Design To Reduce MRI Anxiety Understanding the Drivers of the Patient Experience Technology NewsInteresting New Satnav for Hospitals – a Mobile Experience Medicine embraces app for addressing complaints Other NewsPEN is delighted to be supporting the UK’s first National UK Blog Awards in 2014. #UKBA14 is the first of its kind, where a multitude of industry sectors will be awarded for their Blogging achievements and the Health industry is one of them! It’s a whole new world out there! Entries are now live until midnight on Monday 1st December 2013. To enter and for further details please visit the Awards website: www.blogawardsuk.co.uk
PEN and AKD Work Together To Improve The Patient Experience The Patient Experience Network (PEN) and AKD Solutions (AKD) are announcing a new partnership to support healthcare clients to improve Patient Experience. PEN is increasingly influential as a resource to healthcare leaders who want to understand what world class patient experience is and the steps required to achieve it. With it’s growing status, PEN wanted to ensure that it could provide the best possible solutions for it’s network. Ruth Evans, the Director of PEN explained “we saw the quality of AKD’s work at our National Awards. North West Ambulance Service won the award for Outstanding Patient Experience Innovation using a training tool designed by AKD”. PEN and AKD aim to provide healthcare organisations with access to innovative and cutting edge training solutions. The training solutions are focused on customer, patient and staff experience and other related matters. Akin Thomas the CEO of AKD, explained “Patient Experience is a passion for us. We’ve got many examples, good and bad, of patient experience. We want to help healthcare organisations deliver the quality of service they aspire to. We believe we have an approach to learning that can add real value to PEN and it’s network”.
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Interesting to read two stories about the same research: 
