Nottinghamshire Healthcare is celebrating a win at the Patient Experience Network National Awards.
The mental health and learning disability service provider came top in the category Setting the Stage/Strengthening the Foundation, for programmes aimed at strengthening an organisation’s commitment to delivering excellent patient/service user experience.
The Trust won the award in recognition of its innovative involvement strategy which ensures the needs, views, aspirations and recovery of service users and carers are at the heart of what it does. The approach engages the whole of the organisation by working with service users and carers at all levels.
Part of this has been the creation of two Involvement Centres where the Trust, in partnership with service users and carers, can develop ways to improve patient experience and the services provided. More than 200 service users and carers are connected with the centres and participate in key forums, staff interviews and leadership programmes.
Judges and delegates at the awards final, which took the form of a best practice conference featuring presentations from the finalists, commented how impressed they were with the Trust’s involvement ethos. Feedback from the judges included: “The breadth, spirit and comprehensive nature of the approach to involvement and patient experience is what makes it special and there is commitment to it at every level.” and, “What a fantastic initiative. Bold, comprehensive and with far reaching possibilities both within Trust and externally. It appears highly sustainable and there is undoubted excellent leadership at work in innovative 'Involvement Centres'.”
Every part of the Trust is asked to meet five standards of involvement and regularly reports back on progress and changes made. A Service User and Carer Experience Group makes sure feedback is listened to and acted upon. One of the ways feedback is gained is via a service user and carer survey. The Trust has also linked into the national website, Patient Opinion,
A recently elected Members’ Council with 21 public members will shape future plans and feedback on the quality of services along with Communities of Interest groups, where people with a shared passion or experiences come together to generate new ideas and shape services.
Paul Sanguinazzi, Head of Involvement said: “We are absolutely delighted to have won this award. Involvement has gone from strength to strength in the Trust and has proved to be a highly effective way to ensure that everything we do has the best interest of service users, carers and patients at its heart. It is a strategy which benefits everyone and will improve the quality and experience of our services. Thank you to everyone who has helped to make it such a success.”
The PEN National Awards aim to be the first and leading awards dedicated to improving patient experience - for all organisations involved in care in the UK.
Entries came from across the public and private health and social care sectors and were judged by experts in the field of patient and customer experience and patients themselves looking for innovation and leadership in patient experience, evidence of service user involvement and recognising initiatives that have helped improve the patient experience.
