Psychosis Clinical Academic Group (CAG)

Patient Opinion

Patrick GillespieService Director and Joint Leader Psychosis Clinical Academic Group28th September 2011

SLaM“Everything we do is to improve the experience of people using

our services, and to promote mental health and well-being for all”

Treat mental illness effectively Work in partnership to promote mental well-being Support others by sharing our clinical expertise and knowledge

Key characteristics:

Support in the community with back up support in hospital Integration of physical, psychological & social approaches Wide range of multi-disciplinary services and supports Partnerships with users, carers, voluntary sector &

community groups Working within a care system promoting wellbeing and

resilience

Once upon a time everything we did was in an institutional setting….

A Few Facts 4 main hospital sites but 246 buildings on 125 sites.

5,200 people treated in hospital each year but community caseload is 39,000.

68 hospital wards but 328 community teams.

£358m of income budgets in 2011/12 and about half of CAG income relates to community services.

Some CAGs have very few hospital services e.g. Children & Adolescents and Addictions.

We are part of Kings Health Partners, an Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC), along with two other NHS Foundation Trusts (Guy’s and St Thomas', and King’s College Hospital) and a University (King’s College London).

The Psychosis CAG Largest group of psychosis clinicians and

researchers in the world.

Worldwide recognition as research, clinical and training pioneers.

Largest CAG in SLaM with 1900 staff, 74 services treating 10,000 patients p.a. and 700 beds across all pathways.

Annual budget of over £128million across health

and social care.

Psychosis represents 50% of SLaM’s CAG operational budget.

Psychosis CAG Mission Statement:To improve patient experience and clinical outcomes for all people with psychosis by:

Developing care pathways which provide excellent treatment and care across the whole system.

Improving the skills and performance of the workforce.

Informing treatments and care with the latest clinical research findings.

Increasing the efficient and effective use of our resources

Using Patient Opinion within the Trust:

Commenced Using Patient Opinion in 2009 It is one aspect of service user involvement in the Trust and

particularly helpful to some people who prefer this way of giving their views.

It is part of the Trust being open and responsive to people who use our services, and being responsive helps us to build goodwill.

Where there are particularly critical comments it alerts us to problems that we might have missed through our usual monitoring channels.

Any negative comments are helpful as they give us a chance to improve our services, and a chance to have a dialogue with a person who posts a comment.

Hearing people's stories is always very powerful and a great motivator for positive change.

Using Patient Opinion within the Trust:

Positive comments are really helpful too as they are a great morale booster for staff.

The opinions posted complement the overall picture of the Trust that senior managers gain from other forms of quality monitoring.

We have streamed postings onto our Trust website and people can also post comments directly form the Trust website to Patient Opinion

Using Patient Opinion within the Trust:

It feels right at this point in time to be using the internet to have a presence and a dialogue with the people who use our services:

The internet is a useful resource and an ever more popular channel through which your service users and carers will communicate with and about us.

We need to appreciate the internet as a means by which people want to interact with us.

Can we afford to ignore this medium?

Benefits of using Patient Opinion:

Provides Service Users and Carers with the opportunity to put forward their concerns and experience without any fear or feelings of intimidations.

Service users and Carers can explain their story exactly how they saw it, regardless of any differences of opinion from staff.

The national coverage provides Service Users and Carers with the possibility of seeing similar issues and/or successes in other Trusts. In other words, the issues and opportunities are potentially shared.

Encourages dialogue with Service Users and Carers.

Provides the Trust with issues that staff may have been totally unaware of.

Using Patient Opinion within the Trust We have had over 30 posting to date and are keen to receive

more and we will be promoting Patient Opinion again to our service users in the coming months.

We currently have over 70 staff signed up as subscribers or responders.

The themes from the postings are:

Care and treatment Quality of Food Advocating for Services Staff attitudes Environmental Patient Safety

Benefits of Using Patient Opinion Positive site in engaging distressed clients re: their

clinical care and treatment whether by encouraging and arranging contact (with client consent) with clinician or through the complaints process.

Changes are easier when a facilities issue:

Changes to catering ordering system Allocation of nurse to check cleanliness of

toilets/shower room Washing machine fixed

Benefits of Using Patient Opinion

Trusts are under no obligation to respond to postings and so it is liberating and enables committed Trusts to respond more productively then out of fear and or rushed.

It is very encouraging for staff to see success stories on PO which also highlights that Patient Opinion is not a tool for Service Users and Carers to constantly write negatively.

Patient Opinion Some staff have been nervous about personalised

comments, public humiliation and postings being used in a negative personal way.

However Patient Opinion scrutinise every posting before publication and ensure it is tailored so not personal to anyone in specific. 

The contact with Patient Opinion before publication has proved valuable and useful.

Can be very frustrating when someone has posted a serious concern about the care and treatment of a loved one and they do not contact you especially when you have encouraged them to do so.

Patient Opinion in the future - Empowerment

Empowering service users by developing electronic personal health records

Integrating key information, including care plans, and outcomes monitoring

Encouraging service users to share their story through Patient Opinion

For more information, contact:ephr@slam.nhs.uk

Patient Opinion in the future Will be used on all Trust information leaflets and

information systems.

Used as part of e-signature.

Will be linked to the Trust’s twitter account.

In Lambeth undertaking a major service redesign initiative the ‘Lambeth Living Well Collaborative’ and will be using Patient Opinion to get views on its success or otherwise.

Finally

Patient Opinion staff have given us invaluable assistance, support and advice on managing the systems and making responses.

Patient Opinion would not be successful without the commitment, desire and skill of the Patient Opinion staff.