People
You’ve probably already got a group of people together who are keen on being involved with Star Wards. These are likely to be a mixture of staff from different disciplines (including non-medical staff like those from catering and domestic services), patients and patient reps, and perhaps carers.
Star Wards’ group
So that you’re not personally stuck with doing everything, and of course to be democratic, inclusive etc etc a steering group is pretty invaluable. Even a less structured but committed group of people is also a real help.
Deciding priorities
The Star Wards’ group, whether Steering or just vaguely hinting, can decide what are the priorities for your ward. Again, this can be done in quite a structured way or on a gut instinct basis. The structured route will probably take you to the website feature of great benchmarking resources created by members of the Star Wards’ community.
You’ll see from these that wards are using benchmarking as a way of gauging where they’re currently at with providing an actively therapeutic environment for patients and as a way of action planning. But one of the main benefits of the exercise has turned out to be that it invariably gives staff a real morale boost to have acknowledged all the good practice that’s already in place.
Beyond the 75 ideas
The 75 ideas are just that – ideas. Definitely not standards, eligibility criteria or anything that would look comfortable in a government document. (The easiest way to differentiate between anything from Star Wards and anything Official is that the former will have exquisite photos of a Tibetan Terrier and the latter won’t.) Wards have been very diplomatic about some of the ideas but we’ve been able to crack the tact code and recognise that things like departing patients staying on an extra couple of days to support new patients are unrealistic. So feel free to ignore any that aren’t helpful to you.
Resources
All our resources can be downloaded from our website. If you’d like glossy copies of our at-a-glance leaflet, please do contact us. One resource you might find helpful is a powerpoint presentation about Star Wards, which you can use off-the-PC or are welcome to adapt. You can find it here.
We look forward to hearing how things go for you, and to visiting. In the meantime, please do get in touch if there’s anything we can do to support your involvement with Star Wards.
