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Abstract
Understanding the experiences of people who use a service is crucial to support quality improvement, however, gathering unbiased feedback is particularly challenging when the service is delivered in the person’s own home, when they may be dying or distressed.
The aim of this project was to develop an effective and sustainable approach to gathering feedback from both patients and carers about their experiences accessing a specialist community palliative care service.
Such feedback will i) inform new service development, ii) provide quality assurance to the team, managers and regulators and iii) provide RNs evidence for revalidation of their registration
What is being done and how it is being evaluated A workshop with key stakeholders explored the purpose of the survey and key measures, based on the Warwick Patient Experience framework (Staniszewska et al., 2014). Questions were prioritised, recognising the link between length of survey and response quality (Cape, 2010). Selecting questions that were validated, or heavily utilised in other healthcare settings, using Likert-style ratings and free text response options and following feedback from our patient and public involvement group, the questions were tested on a sample of patients and carers before rolling out.
Questionnaires are sent both to community patients and to family/carers following their bereavement. Response rate for the first four months was 28% (n = 108).
Overall satisfaction rating is 95%, with the highest response reporting perceived dignity at 98.4% and the lowest around support for whole person, being 89%.
The methodology appears to successfully provide a mechanism for experience of care reporting in this setting. A procedure was developed to follow up negative comment directly with the respondent, or, if anonymous, within a team reflection session, demonstrating a commitment to quality improvement. Positive comments are circulated.
Feedback received thus far demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach, and is proving to be a valuable contribution to quality assurance and service development.
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