Examples

Asking patients to evaluate an information leaflet for patients due to have venograms

When developing a patient information leaflet for patients due to undertake venograms, staff in an imaging department obtained feedback from patients on the leaflet: whether there was enough information, if it was relevant, whether too much unnecessary information. They asked after the venogram, if the treatment was as expected from information given. This ensured the wording for the information leaflet is in patient-friendly English and not medical jargon.

As a result of feedback on the patient pathway, staff would also like to change the pathway for venograms and use them in conjunction with ultra-sounds on a routine basis.

Asking patients if they wanted their x-ray results immediately without waiting to hear from the referring doctor

A trained reporting radiographer with many years of radiographic imaging felt that it was logical for her to tell patients their results and decided to try this with a select group of patients. She asked them if they wanted to know their x-ray results immediately from her or wait and hear from their referring doctor. To her surprise most of the patients wanted to know straight away from her. They were relieved to get an opinion so quickly and they all coped with the results without any undue stress or anxiety. This demonstrated that experienced radiographers could give this type of information to patients as an accepted practice.

Information for patients based on patients' questions

Whilst patients are in hospital, they all have a contact card for the clinical nurse specialist for thoracic surgery so they can ring her if there are any problems when they get home. She is also piloting a leaflet, based on patients' questions, including information about preparing for temporary and permanent changes to their lifestyle, analgesia and wound care. Knowing how stressful patients find the waiting for results, she has worked with the histopathologists to reduce unnecessary delays.

A patient focus co-ordinator for the ward

One nurse is the patient focus co-ordinator and steers all the ward's patient-friendly initiatives. She is planning to install a comments box and will ensure that comments are considered and that action taken is fed back to patients and staff.

Information for patients with lung problems

The Heart hospital sees patients with both heart and lung problems, but there was no information specifically for patients with lung problems. The latter were ringing up in alarm when they received an appointment at The Heart thinking there had been a mistake. Following the ‘information for patients' session, the clinical nurse specialist for thoracic surgery wrote a special leaflet for patients with thoracic problems with the help of 4Ps, and a sentence has been added to all The Heart's general literature.

Back to: Level one criteria

Top of page