For our NHS Quest Breakfast Session on 26 January, we were joined by Louise Stead, CEO at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust, to discuss how the trust is emphasising the importance of listening, not only for patient safety but also to shape the services it provides.
The Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust is a 500 bedded District General Hospital and a regional cancer centre providing for the population across south-east England.
Sources of patient experience data
The Trust uses Care Opinion and PEP Health in addition to patient and carers groups, and other internal support groups such as the very active Cancer Voices partnership. This supplements the more formal channels such as PALS, complaints and compliments.
How lived experience data is used
In 2023 there were 31,000 views of the Royal Surrey Care Opinion page and 1500 experiences described. The Patient Experience Team provides services with experience feedback from Care Opinion and helps them to shape the response to the service user/patient. By triangulating the data from all these sources and active listening events, the Trust can identify themes requiring corporate action.
Examples of experience driven improvements:
Difficulty with accessibility and parking for visitors and patients was highlighted in experience data. To combat this, the Trust increased disability parking, recruited volunteers to assist visitors and patients at all entrances and revised the pre-attendance information.
The Trust, in common with others, has struggled with the uptake of the Friends and Family Test in maternity services because each user is required to complete it at each of the four stages of their care. This led the Trust to invite the Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MVP) to explore the experiences of women and their families as well as Badgernet (an electronic Maternity notes system) which many Trusts use.
The MVP identified a high level of anxiety in the maternity service user community. As the MVP is funded by the ICS, and as such is regarded as independent and impartial by communities, the Trust invited them to present their work and findings to the Trust Board annually.
The Trust has also established a midwifery post dedicated entirely to patient experience and created a regular virtual open forum called “Ask Amy Anything” which has proved very popular and is another rich source of patient/user experience.
A new maternity website was also developed in 100 languages.
Get in touch
Thank you to everyone who attended the session. Please get in touch if you would like more information.
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