The Friends and Family Test (FFT) aims to provide a simple headline metric which, when combined with follow-up questions, is a tool to ensure transparency, celebrate success and galvanise improved patient experience.

Since April 2013, the FFT question has been asked in all NHS Inpatient and A&E departments across England and, from October 2013, all providers of NHS funded maternity services have also been asking women the same question at different points throughout their care.

NHS England is introducing the Friends and Family Test to the remaining NHS funded services late 2014 and early 2015.

We also offer a full design and print service for your patient experience questionnaires and Friends and Family Test cards, options for data collection from non-English speaking patients, and the production of ‘easy read’  questionnaires.

Contact us for a free personalised proposal for your Trust.

Improving patient experience is a key aim for the NHS. Patient experience means putting the patient and their experience at the heart of quality improvement.

By asking, monitoring, and acting upon patient feedback, organisations are able to make improvements in the areas that patients say matter most to them.

Over the past few years, several documents and initiatives have highlighted the importance of the patient's experience and the need to focus on improving these experiences where possible. For example, Lord Darzi's report, high quality care for all (2008) highlighted the importance of the entire patient experience within the NHS, ensuring people are treated with compassion, dignity and respect within a clean, safe and well-managed environment.

In trying to create a NHS cultural shift' towards a truly patient-centred service, The NICE Quality Standard 15 (Quality standard for patient experience in adult NHS services ) has identified a number of generic patient experiences relevant to people who use adult NHS services in England and Wales.

1 Patients are treated with dignity, kindness, compassion, courtesy, respect, understanding and honesty.

2 Patients experience effective interactions with staff who have demonstrated competency in relevant communication skills.

3 Patients are introduced to all healthcare professionals involved in their care, and are made aware of the roles and responsibilities of the members of the healthcare team.

4 Patients have opportunities to discuss their health beliefs, concerns and preferences to inform their individualised care.

5 Patients are supported by healthcare professionals to understand relevant treatment options, including benefits, risks and potential consequences.

6 Patients are actively involved in shared decision making and supported by healthcare professionals to make fully informed choices about investigations, treatment and care that reflect what is important to them.

7 Patients are made aware that they have the right to choose, accept or decline treatment and these decisions are respected and supported.

8 Patients are made aware that they can ask for a second opinion.

9 Patients experience care that is tailored to their needs and personal preferences, taking into account their circumstances, their ability to access services and their coexisting conditions.

10 Patients have their physical and psychological needs regularly assessed and addressed, including nutrition, hydration, pain relief, personal hygiene and anxiety.

11 Patients experience continuity of care delivered, whenever possible, by the same healthcare professional or team throughout a single episode of care.

12 Patients experience coordinated care with clear and accurate information exchange between relevant health and social care professionals.

13 Patients' preferences for sharing information with their partner, family members and/or carers are established, respected and reviewed throughout their care.

14 Patients are made aware of who to contact, how to contact them and when to make contact about their ongoing healthcare needs.

Collecting Patient Experience Feedback

Trusts developing a patient experience programme should apply the Relevance, Time, Deployment approach in order to maximise response rates and achieve meaningful feedback data.

RELEVANCE: Are all questions in your survey relevant to the patient experience for the service you wish to obtain feedback for?

TIME:  The survey should be designed so that respondents can easily understand the questions, enabling them to answer each question quickly without a great deal of thought.  For general feedback, the questionnaire should be short in length enabling the user to complete within a couple of minutes.

DEPLOYMENT:  Recommendation 255 from the recent Francis Enquiry publication into Stafford Hospital, recommends the real time publication of patient experience data where possible.  With the development of technology, feedback data can be collected and reported in real time using touchscreens, tablets, mobile phones and online surveys.  These methods are inexpensive to deploy and ideal to collect continuous or large numbers of responses. 

However, paper-based and telephone surveys still have a very important place to play in the capture  of patient experience feedback.    

People may not have internet access and may not wish to complete the feedback in presence of the healthcare professional they have just met, in such cases, paper-based or telephone feedback is the most appropriate method. Additionally, telephone feedback is an excellent resource to ensure accuracy of the feedback, to obtain qualitative responses and to further explore respondent comments. 

Direct Data Analysis offer a full patient experience feedback service.  Please visit our website for further information, or contact us to discuss your requirements and obtain a free written quotation. 

Mini poll shows that over 50% of respondents would use a Community Pharmacy to test and manage their blood pressure.

In a recent mini poll undertaken by Direct Data Analysis, 52% of respondents stated that they would use a Community Pharmacy to test and manage their blood pressure. 

In the poll, 27% of respondents stated they wound not use a Community Pharmacy for the service, whilst 21% did not know if they would use a Community Pharmacy to test and manage their blood pressure.  

Over recent years, Community Pharmacies have been given the opportunity to provide a range of diagnostic and management services to assist patients and save the need for a visit to their GP.  However, previous work has shown that a number of people are still unaware that they can use a Community Pharmacy to discuss and manage certain conditions without the need for a visit to their GP. Additionally, previous work has shown that a number of people have concerns over privacy issues around discussing their condition in their local Community Pharmacy. 

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied herein, Direct Data Analysis Ltd cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Unless otherwise indicated, opinions expressed herein are those of the author of the page and do not necessarily represent the views of the NHS.

www.direct-data-analysis.co.uk

According to recent NHS data looking at smoking quit rates for various social economic groups, full time students are the least successful when it comes to quitting smoking in England.

Data collected for the NHS shows that 34.8% of full time students successfully quit smoking at a 4 week follow up period after setting their quit date.  This compares to the national average of 47.9% who successfully quit smoking.  

The most successful groups when it came to quitting smoking were the retired and those in managerial or professional positions, where 56.2% had successfully quit smoking at a 4 week follow up from setting their quit date.   

The quit smoking success rate for the various social economic groups are as follows:

• Full time students 34.8%
  
• Never worked or unemployed for over 1 year 37.8%
• Sick/disabled and unable to return to work 41.7%
• Unable to code 43.8%
• Home carers (unpaid) 43.9%
• Routine and manual occupations 51.0%
• Intermediate occupations 53.0%
• Prisoners 54.3%
• Managerial and professional occupations 56.2%
• Retired 56.2%

Data was collected on 552,602 people in England who had set a quit smoking date between April and December 2011.  Of those persons, 264,795 (47.9) had successfully quit smoking at the 4 week follow up period.

Data for the persons setting quit dates and smoking quit rates was collected from Local NHS Trusts by the NHS Information Centre.  
Source: The NHS Information Centre: Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services: England, April 2011 to December 2011 (Q3 - Quarterly report)

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied herein, Direct Data Analysis Ltd cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Unless otherwise indicated, opinions expressed herein are those of the author of the page and do not necessarily represent the views of the NHS.

Direct Data Analysis