Last month, the TP-CKD team were invited to visit Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Northern Ireland to run a workshop with the renal team around the introduction of patient measures into their practice.
The clinical lead, Dr Ying Kuan, had organised the meeting and there were over 30 attendees – nurses, patients, consultants as well as the CEO of the trust, and the local commissioner – a great turn-out. We had a video link to the partner hospital site in Omagh so that staff there could join in the discussions.
Throughout the day, we were asking three main questions:
- Why should we be interested in patient measures?
- What do you see as the barriers to collecting patient measures?
- How do you think you can use these in practice in partnership with patients?
It was an interactive, energetic three hours and the response from the team was positive and engaged. Discussions around what co-production means in practice, what it would take logistically to collect and use patient measures, as well as the reasons behind doing this – giving patients a voice, ensuring quality improvement efforts are relevant to patients, as well as supporting the patient to be a partner in their own care – were all discussed.
We ended the workshop by asking those who attended whether this was something they would like to implement. The answer was a resounding ‘yes’, and we are looking forward to developing the next steps towards achieving this, in partnership with the unit, and looking at how the renal registry can support the region in introducing patient centred measures.
I believe in your work- I think it puts objective measures to patient voice, and experience, and compels us to think differently about how we engage patients (and ourselves)
Dr Ying Kuan, Clinical Lead, Altnagelvin Area Hospital