East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust - Delivering an Excellent Customer Experience

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust provide a wide range of general and specialist services to their patients. The Trust employs over 5,000 staff, working to provide healthcare for around 600,000 local people across the region from four main hospital sites.

As part of their commitment towards continuous improvement, East and North Herts NHS Trust has adopted a major organisational development programme which is entitled ARC.

ARC stands for Accelerate, Refocus and Consolidate.

• Accelerate quality, staff training and communication
• Refocus on patients, staff, values and partners
• Consolidate our services, patient pathways, our hospitals and our teams

Following an initial proposition made to the Trust for the development of a Patient Experience training programme; Juice Learning were invited to meet and present to the ‘ARC Team’ our thoughts on how the Trust might engage staff and leaders in this important agenda.

A two-part programme was devised which would initially see Juice Learning work with Leaders within the Trust to complement and build upon the ARC programme. The key learning outcomes of the ‘Leaders Events’ were established as:

• To agree a clear vision of what Patient Experience Excellence looks like and feels like.
• To identify, celebrate and share previous best practise.
• To provide a view from patients to create an understanding of the impact of Patient Experience and the importance of consistency of delivery.
• To provide the delegates with the skills and motivation to take ownership for leading a culture focussed on delivering Patient Excellence.
• To enable the delegates to identify and positively challenge poor attitudes and unacceptable behaviour from their colleagues (irrespective of hierarchy or role).

Following this a rollout of events to the entire workforce was designed which would incorporate interactive discussion, activities and theatre-based engagement techniques to ‘bring to life’ the reality of Patient Experience within the Trust. The key objectives of the workforce rollout sessions were defined as:

• To ensure that everyone in the Trust understands their role in delivering the vision of excellence outlined in the ARC initiative, and why this is so important to the ongoing success of the Trust.
• To assist participants to visualise and embed the values of the Trust and to engage everyone to take ownership of the service they deliver.
• To describe the impact and consequences of poor and good experiences on patients, visitors and colleagues.
• To recognise that Patient Experience excellence is everybody’s personal responsibility and the importance of effective teamwork in delivering this.
• To understand and celebrate existing best practise.

Underlying all of these objectives and informing how the whole-workforce sessions were designed was a focus upon the Trust’s ‘PIVOT’ values, which lay out in simple terms, the key ‘commitments’ which the organisation is striving to achieve:

• We put our Patients first
• We strive for excellence and continuous Improvement
• We Value everybody
• We are Open and honest
• We work as a Team

The sessions, which continue to be delivered into 2014, though have already reached far in excess of 1,000 members of the Trust’s workforce, have proved to be well received by those who have participated in them, evidenced through the 1,196 evaluation responses which have been collected thus far.

Results

Analysis of the evaluation results from Quarters 1 & 2 of the programme delivery phase has demonstrated an overwhelmingly positive response to the programme and its desired learning outcomes. We asked a series of questions each requiring a 1 – 5 rating (1-low / negative, 5-high / positive).

These results show that from a total of 1,196 completed evaluation forms, 90.8% of participants responded positively to questions about the events and associated learning content, with only 1.6% recording a ‘low’ rating and 7.6% a ‘mid-range’ response to the questions asked.
The post-event evaluation covered 5 key questions, designed to assess the participants’ progress and understanding against the learning objectives of the workshops. The results can be summarised as follows:

88%	Of participants stated that the event helped them to understand what an excellent customer experience looks and feel like, and why it is important.
95%	Of participants understand how every individual’s behaviour, and the interactions they have every day, create either a positive or negative customer experience.
84%	Of participants felt that the event helped them to explore the idea of ‘respect’ and what it means in a diverse, multicultural society.
97%	Of participants recognise that it is everybody’s responsibility to deliver the best patient care through the Trust’s Vision and PIVOT Values.
90%	Of participants confirmed that the events have helped them to understand that by working together effectively, they can achieve much more.

 

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