The Patient Opinion team has been out and about this week – James, Kate and Miriam in Manchester with our Northwest subscribers and Paul, Tim and Amy in Maidstone and London training mental health trusts to use our new mental health services. It was great for us to meet all the people who came to these events but the high points were two barn storming presentations by people from outside the PO team.
In Manchester we had Maria talking about her experiences using Patient Opinion as head of services at 5 Boroughs Partnership Trust. Maria’s enthusiasm for the way that PO helped her track what is happening on the front line across all her busy areas of responsibility, and to use this feedback to help staff actually make the changes that service users were talking about, clearly impressed the other managers at the meeting.
Meanwhile down south Jason told the story of how as a volunteer at Sheffield’s Primary Care Addiction Services he had been helping service users get the changes they wanted. The first big issue coming up on user’s stories was frustration at not knowing how long they had to wait for their appointment – if they went out for a smoke would they miss their appointment? Why were people going in before them? Just giving out more information in reception quickly cooled the tempers that had often been fraying. As Jason said: ‘I never lack from a cup of tea from the receptionists now!’
Once this was out of the way and users began to trust the independence of the PO service and the willingness of PCAS to listen, more interesting uses quickly emerged. Having found a way of asking questions anonymously and getting sensible answers back, service users have begun to ask the clinical questions that they have been afraid to ask. ‘We’re still users and have a young baby. How can we get help without any fear that social services will come and take our baby away?’
So what have we learnt? That you need three things to really begin to make PO fly:
· a steady stream of postings,
· willing and enthusiastic managers,
· And involving lost of staff over among enough time for them to really begin to experience the power of users’ stories to help them deliver better services.
It’s also clear that using volunteers like Jason is great way to do this, especially for groups like substance misusers who are skeptical and suspicious of services.
And if you do this, then your staff and your users will not only tell you useful things, they’ll probably start using the service in ways that you (and us at PO) never even expected.
Oh, and one last thing. If we want to really convince busy people from the service of the benefits of Patient Opinion then we’d better use as many service users and front line managers as we can to speak for us as they are so much better at convincing other managers and clinicians of the benefits of using Patient Opinion than we at PO Central will ever be! So thanks Jason and Maria!
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