"Gall Stones, Gallbladder, waiting times"

Dear Ozziesmum, thank you for taking the time to post the experience of your mother-in-law and for your positive comments in relation to the care she received from the staff on Ward B5.

I am however concerned to read of your mother-in-law’s experience following her discharge and please pass on my sincere apologies to her for creating such confusion and further anxiety. If she would like me to take forward her concerns then please contact our Patient Services department on 01709 424461 who will be more than happy to discuss these concerns and her on-going care needs.

With kind regards,

Grace

Dear Ozziesmum,

Thank you for providing further feedback and I sincerely apologise if you feel that I had interpreted your comments as an attempt to ‘bump’ your mother-in-law up the waiting list as that was certainly not my intention.

I can assure you that we do have communication processes in place and whilst some variances experienced can relate to a failure of the system / process, it is more often how individual staff behaves that is the most significant feature. This is why we ask for you to contact us, if you wish, as this gives us the opportunity to investigate your individual circumstances by identifying the departments and therefore the individuals involved in order to provide them with specific feedback. Whilst you did highlight the pre-assessment service, it is possible that some of the interactions were with other departments.

With regard to our Trust wide communication processes; our Patient Experience Strategy – ‘Every Interaction Counts’ sets out what we are doing to improve every patient’s experience (as detailed below) and a significant part of this is getting accurate communication right every time. It appears that the 4-6 weeks’ timescale your mother-in-law was given for her anticipated operation was not an accurate reflection of the waiting time for surgery and this will be fed back to surgical teams who undertake gall bladder surgery. Every member of staff, regardless of job title, has a part to play in making the patient’s experience the best possible, as in every interaction we have the opportunity to increase or decrease the public’s confidence in our services. Clearly we have failed to achieve a positive experience for you and your mother-in-law for which I apologise.

We have previously undertaken workshops with large groups of staff from all disciplines to raise their awareness of ‘How they are’ with patient’s, members of the public and colleagues. We continue to utilise these workshops as our experience shows us that we cannot teach / train staff how to be with people, as this can appear disingenuous; we therefore prefer to raise awareness and provide staff with practical skills that will make them stop and think about how they portray themselves to patient’s and members of the public, who when coming to hospital feel very vulnerable. Through working with Managers we can assist them to ensure openness and that their staff impact positively on patient’s experience and how they can challenge unacceptable behaviours when raised.

We are continuing this work through our Corporate Induction process for all new starters and through bespoke workshops with each directorate so that we reach existing staff who we may not have attended a workshop before or who need reminding of the importance of this work. We are also reinforcing our ‘Every Interaction Counts’ philosophy through our recently launched ‘dignity and respect’ DVD that staff can access and which highlights how important getting accurate communication right first time is for patients’.

I hope I have given you some assurance that as a hospital we do have processes and on-going work to improve communication.

Kind regards

Grace