| Welcome to the latest issue of SWAN – Star Wards Action Network. I was fortunate to be able to visit North East Wales NHS Trust (thanks Simon and Wyn!) and learnt that even when you’ve got a unit which is physically incredibly difficult to work with, it’s still possible to provide an excellent service to patients. The three service user reps I met were fulsome in their praise of the unit, Llwyn y Groes, and of the positive changes that have been made.
Customer Service Inspiration, courtesy of Phil Dourado “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Carl W Beuchner News from trusts North East Wales are using £3,000 they received from Shell (which has a local presence) towards implementing Star Wards’ ideas. Great! Although most of our ideas are low or no cost, most of them would certainly benefit from an injection of funds. We’d be really interested to know what other pilot sites are doing in terms of resourcing the ideas. One possibility is for Bright to apply for money to introduce something across all the sites – eg Mind’s publications. What do you think? Ideas in action I’ve decided to ditch the rather dogmatic ‘start at #1 and finish with #75’ approach, having visited Llwyn y Groes and feeling inspired about the possibilities of improving patients’ experiences of taking their medication. #66 No more queuing for medication! I’m not a pharmacist (among many other things I’m not…) so the following may be technically flawed. But I hope it’s a good starting point for discussion. The central issue is that in most hospitals, patients need take no responsibility for managing their medication all the time they’re there. But as soon as we’re back home, we’re completely in charge of it and there’s plenty of scope to forget to order it, take it, take the right combination at the right times etc. A continuum of self-medication could look something like this, with the later options being reserved for those patients whose state of mind or nearness to discharge allows:
An important component of the self-medication regime would be having the alarmingly named ‘psychoeducation’ – sessions ideally with a pharmacist where patients:
#16 Exercise machines It seems this is not as straight forward as it should be! Some wards may face excessive restrictions on patients using the equipment eg the training or even qualifications that staff need to hold when ‘supervising’ patients. The next thing will be patients needing to have training or even qualifications before using an exercise bike, walking around the ward above a certain speed….. Seasons’ greetings! Marion |
