News

Positive change to improve patients’ care journeys was implemented the day after a recent event involving a wide range of health and social care staff.  

Creating Better Care Journeys was held at the end of August, and was attended by 52 Health and Social Care staff. The purpose of the event was to reflect on the current state of care journeys in the Western Isles and to consider how to make improvements.  

The day after the event took place, a Consultant Physician took immediate steps to improve the patient experience by creating a ‘social space’ at the end of a bay, so that patients could have a hot drink of meal away from their bed. Small steps such as these make a big difference to inpatients, their wellbeing and their recovery. 

As a result of the event, planning is also underway to use Dynamic Discharge Planning meetings more effectively, and in Primary Care there is a demonstrator site on the Isle of Lewis that will work collaboratively with the Dementia Consultant to improve Primary Care advance care planning.  

The event included representation from all staff groups involved in supporting patient journeys, including social, community, primary and secondary care, and was supported by Patient Focus Public Involvement. 

Attendees were welcomed to the event by NHS Western Isles Nurse & AHP Director/Chief Operating Officer, Fiona Mackenzie.   

Fiona commented: “I’d like to thank everyone who participated in this very worthwhile event. It’s important that those who deliver health and social care services take time to reflect on how things are for our patients and how even small steps can make a huge difference to the patients’ experience.  

“The carefully planned programme gave us a safe space for facilitated discussion of two care journeys, one presented by Micheal Macdonald (FY2) and the other by Karen Mackenzie (Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Consultant).  When combined with quantitative data such as Delayed Discharges, qualitative feedback such as Care Opinion and patient/carer stories can underpin improvement work in a positive way to improve outcomes.” 

NHS Western Isles Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme Lead, Susan Macaulay, said: “It was an emotive experience, hearing about care journeys that could have gone better, but there was a collective desire and motivation to make things better. Those who attended took time to identify key themes from each care journey, and to identify an action that they can take forward individually and as a team.” 

Some of the other changes since the event include an increase in requests for guidance on best practice Anticipatory Care Planning. Importantly, a takeaway message about the need for better care planning in the community (before time of crisis) seems to have been heard, including the need for more public education around Power of Attorney. Collaboration has also begun with a short life working group to address the issue of capacity assessments.  

As part of the event, attendees were given an opportunity to provide feedback on the event and this included ‘what went well’ and ‘what could be better’. The following are some examples of feedback: 

“Having an in-person event, having a mixture of presentations and group work. Looking at real case studies to inform future actions and improvements in care. Using an emotive story, although difficult to hear, I think is a good thing, as these stories that need to be heard.” 

“What went extremely well is that people made a commitment to change ideas and some have happened already! It has also got people talking about what needs to be improved which is a definite win!” 

“The real life patient experiences was a very powerful tool.” 

“I think it would have been even better if the patient stories had been collated from a multi agency perspective to share the whole patient journey. It would also have been even better if the event had 1 story that went well as well as 1 that didn't go so well. That would mean we could focus on learning from excellence and perhaps reflecting on what went well with one journey and applying it to another and to finish on the positive story as it felt a bit deflated in the afternoon.” 

Susan added: “The Care Journey event planning group is in the process of creating a detailed event report and action plan.  We are fortunate to have such a power of Health and Social Care knowledge and skills in our community and the planning group looks forward to hosting a follow up event, as well as spotlight sessions throughout the year to highlight ongoing improvements.”