Here at Healthwatch Southampton, we have been asking local NHS trusts to tell us a bit more about how they have been collecting people’s health and care experiences over the last few months.
University Hospital Southampton Foundation Trust has shared this message, from Ellis Banfield, Head of Experience & Involvement:
We continue to prioritise patient experience during these times and we’ve had some fantastic feedback about some of our initiatives to keep patients and families informed.
During the pandemic, we’ve established a patient property hub for families to drop off items for their relatives; a patient messaging service to relay messages, poems, and photographs from families to patients on our wards; implemented a family liaison service to ensure families can access information about the care and health of their loved one; provided virtual support and advice to carers; and established a shielded patient hub to provide information, signpost, and help to meet the needs of those patients who have been advised to shield and isolate due to being clinically high risk.
The Hub has received calls from beyond Southampton, into Dorset, up to Guildford and down to the Isle of Wight, and has taken on average 100 contacts per day since starting a few weeks ago. They have made successful referrals to volunteer support: food delivery, prescriptions and befriending. They have also resolved many clinical queries and are now receiving referrals from GPs and community care. We have also had 100 carers make contact for support.
In addition, the wider patient experience and involvement team have; organised the door staffing since end of March coordinating shifts, rota and training: relayed over 1000 messages from families to inpatients. These have been emails, photographs, and poems: received over 350 patient property drop-offs which have been delivered to patients on the wards: returned over 50 deceased patient belongings back to bereaved families at their homes via our car drop-off service, removing the need for families to make the journey in to hospital: introduced bereavement packs that belongings are put into, and these contain a condolence card, bereavement support information, and a knitted heart as a gesture of remembrance :introduced telephone and virtual interpreting as a standard practice, with over 200 sessions booked by clinical teams in the past two months and produced over 30 pieces of COVID-19 specific patient information materials for a range of services.
COVID-19 has posed a number of problems in getting the views and experiences of patients. We continued offering the chance to complete the Friends and Family test during the COVID-19 period, but unsurprisingly saw a reduction in response rate. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, 97% of respondents said they would recommend the care to their Friends & Family. We received fewer complaints in the period too, and paused investigations while we responded to the pandemic. In the next few months we will be focusing on gaining feedback from our shielded patients who have utilised our hub to better understand their needs, and we will shortly be undertaking a piece of work to collect the experiences of patients, carers, and families during COVID-19.
Just some of the feedback we have received during this challenging period:
Patient feedback, received by University Hospital Southampton June 2020
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We are keen for local people to tell us how health services have been for you: share your feedback here or give us a call on 02380 216 018