Darent Valley Hospital - DGT - Quality Strategy

Quality priorities

Positive patient experience Enriching the experience of our patients and their families Lead: Chief Nurse Trust Group / Coordinating Committee: Patient Experience Outcomes: • Services are designed, and care delivered, in a way that involves patients, carers and families as partners in care • Staff work in services that they believe are delivering the best positive outcomes for patients, carers and families • Feedback from patients, carers and families is taken seriously and influences improvements in care • Both patient and public voice are integral in the decision making process when making changes to services or care delivery • Improving children’s and young people’s services Each of these outcomes is underpinned by a series of measures of success which evolve over the five years of this strategy. These will be monitored and reported to the Patient Experience Committee at a frequency agreed by the committee itself. See appendix for the specific measures of success for each of the five outcomes that together will deliver the quality priority, a positive patient experience. The Patient Experience committee is a sub-committee of the Quality and Safety Committee and as such, the Patient Experience committee minutes are received by the Quality and Safety committee.

Feedback from patients and staff in June 2020, based on changes in practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic, included the following recommendations to be taken forward relating to patient experience: • Continuation of the Compassionate Care Team, that facilitatedtechnologyenabledconversations with patient’s loved ones, to reduce loneliness and anxiety as a result of visitor restrictions for inpatients • Continuation of the Family Support Team, provided by the palliative care team, that provided support to the families of patients in their last days • Exploration of how to best enable patients to have greater confidentiality when liaising via telephone or video calls • Adoption of hand signs, and other ways to communicate emotions to patients, when wearing protective equipment which limits patients’ ability to “read” staff • The commitment of our community has been overwhelming. We are committed to engaging our patients, their families and carers in the design of services and pathways to improve the patient experience, and provide outstanding care as close to home as possible, which will continue to include the use of digital technology

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Trust Strategy Summary