NGH introduces new measures to learn from patients' experience

“If you had a magic wand, what changes would you make to improve the experiences of care for other patients and families?” That’s one of the questions posed by Northampton General Hospital at its inaugural patient listening event last night.
Former patients and their families shared their experience of care at the hospital and were invited to share their thoughts on what might make every patients’ care a positive experience.

A random selection of 26 patients who were inpatients in May were invited to attend the event with their families.
Carolyn Fox, director of nursing,midwifery and patient services, said: “Caring for our patients doesn’t start and stop with treating the illness or condition that brought them into hospital. A significant amount of the feedback we receive from patients is not directly related to the medical or nursing treatment they received, it’s about how we made them feel.

“That’s why we’ve introduced our listening events. We want to hear about what went well for them and what would have made their experience better. We also want to hear what our patients and their families believe should be the non-negotiables, the things that should always happen during every patient experience.

“The listening event is just one way we’re using patient feedback to drive improvements. We’re one of only six NHS organisations taking part in a research project to develop a national toolkit for using patient experience data to improve care.

“We’re also piloting real-time patient surveys on three of our wards in a bid to ensure that feedback to our wards is timely and meaningful.”