Role of peer support workers in improving patient experience (BMJ Quality)

The aim of the project was to improve patient experience for people in Tower Hamlets Specialist Addictions Unit in order to increase satisfaction by 25% in 12 months starting in August 2014.
The team used the model for improvement as part of ELFT’s quality improvement programme to support iterative cycles of testing and learning. This involved support from the Trust’s quality improvement team.

Please click the PDF to the left to read more about this ELFT QI Project published in BMJ Quality.

The Specialist Addictions Services Quality Conference

The Specialist Addictions Services Quality Conference on Wednesday 28th June started off with an encouraging message from the Chief Executive Officer, Dr Navina Evans. The day had a good mix of sharing, learning, networking and celebrating the culture of improving quality that is shared by the core services that make up this passionate directorate – R3 service, P2R service, Reset service, Blood Bourne Virus service and the partner organisation Blenheim.

There was a real focus on sharing the personal stories that had been captured from staff, service users and volunteers through video clips and the recovery trees. Despite the challenges being faced by the sector including services in ELFT in terms of reducing drop-out rates and parental substance misuse, it was encouraging to hear from Alison Keating of Public Health England, that as a country we have one of the best harm reduction outcomes in the world because of getting people into treatment.

A notable theme from earlier in the day that re-emerged later in the system provoking “colourful balls” quality improvement simulation, was that ‘you shouldn’t train people if you are not going to provide supervision afterwards’. The day concluded with a fun exercise to bring together the aspirations of staff, service users, volunteers and partners to tackle some of the biggest problems in order to improve the quality of the service. Many volunteered to get involved in future projects around the three themes that emerged: Organisation/Operations and Resources; Relationship and interactions with other services; Service User engagement.

Improving patient experience in Tower Hamlets SAU

This month we caught up with Wiktor Kulik from Tower Hamlets Specialist Addictions Team to find out about their QI project aimed at improving patient experience in tower hamlets SAU.

How did you identify the improvement idea for your project?

TH SAU helps people struggling with complex addiction, often with comorbid mental health problems and other complexities. This group is particularly difficult to engage.

Attendance at appointments is directly related to clinical and other outcomes and depends a great deal on patient’s experience of the service.

The start of the project also coincided with an appointment of a new peer support worker, who was ideally placed to help with this kind of work.

Did you identify any barriers to your project? If so how did you overcome them?

The typical barrier is finding time and will for the additional effort required to improve quality. Asking busy teams to add yet another activity to already a long list of requirements.

What helps on the trust level- QI team is so actively promoting the ideas and the board is fully supportive of this approach. What helps on a team level is to try and design data collection and change ideas to be as simple and effortless as possible. If the change idea can reduce the workload – even better. my advice would be to try and use as much as possible the data that is already collected.

Another thing that helps engage teams is sharing the data, especially if it shows an improvement

What are your early results and latest data showing us?

The early results were really promising – number of people attending peer support led groups increased as did the satisfaction. Since then it is a bit more challenging to improve this even further.

Staff satisfaction fluctuated due to the wider system changes and uncertainty over the teams future.

Has the QI training helped you run your project?

QI training brings a variety of lessons. What and how to measure – the need for baseline data and when a change is an improvement.

But the best element of it was watching other projects develop and borrowing ideas from others.

Finally, how would you sum up your personal learning experience of QI and its benefits.

Learning improvement methodology and leading the projects has been an amazing experience. I try and use simplified methods in my personal life and am sure it will benefit my future patients as well.