Article Text
Abstract
Background Knowing what people think about our services is vital, enabling us to respond to our patients’ needs and shaping and planning future service developments and improvements which are driven by the needs of our service users. Previously an external company gathered our patients’ feedback. This provided quantitative data only with no narrative to support any negative feedback given for us to learn from patient experience to inform our practice. There was a steep decline in the numbers returned during the COVID-19 pandemic and a new approach was needed to listen to and learn from service user feedback (NHS improvement. Patient experience improvement framework. 2018).
Aim To improve the quality and quantity of feedback to gain insight into our patients’ experiences, and to intelligently collate the data to enable a dynamic response to inform quality improvements (Berger, Saut, Berssaneti. BMJ Open. 2020; 10(10):e037641) and service developments.
Method A co-production approach was used to develop new bespoke electronic surveys for each team with mixed quantitative and qualitative questions to allow us to hear more of the patients’ voice. They were uploaded to a Patient Experience module on Vantage. Electronic tablets were available for patients to use and the QR code displayed around hospice. Team contact cards were created with the QR code enabling access to the surveys and paper copies were made available.
Results Since implementation in July 2023, 200 surveys have been completed. The ability to locally analyse and share data using infographics dynamically has had a positive impact on teams, enabling a rapid response to patients’ experiences.
Conclusion We are getting rich, meaningful, and varied data leading to QI projects to improve our services. The patient voice is an integral part of this learning and improvement. We will continue to develop new innovative ways to gather feedback and support continuous improvement work using the voices of our patients as the driving force.