‘HOW ARE YOU FEELING, LOVE?’
Strict new guidelines for HSE staff mean you’ll never again be asked...
HOSPITAL staff should no longer call patients ‘dear’, ‘love’, ‘boys’ or ‘lads’ – as the HSE unveils strict new rules for employees.
Staff must now only refer to patients by their first name, under a new training programme being rolled out across the country.
They have also been sternly warned that referring to anyone using terms such as ‘the one with the hip’ is not allowed. Friendly phrases previously used by nurses – such as, ‘How are you today, dear?’ – are being targeted under the new programme.
The new rules are part of a wide-scale overhaul of communication in HSE hospitals after staff were found to refer to patients by bedroom numbers and diagnoses. Staff are now being encouraged to use colleagues’ and patients’
real names rather than pet names such as ‘love’, ‘girls’, ‘boys’ and ‘lads’. Language exercises will teach nurses, doctors and administrative staff how to call people by their names and avoid ‘depersonalising’ language.
The HSE report into the issue said: ‘Do we talk about “feeding people” instead of assisting with meals or refer to someone coming back from theatre as “the hip/the hernia/ knee” etc?
‘This is a powerful chance to help raise awareness of how de-personalising some commonly used language can be.’
These language exercises will stop collective names being used where a person’s name might be more appropriate. The communications programme has been rolled out in 18 hospitals around the country and is expected to be introduced in others in the coming months.
One hospital, Mullingar Regional Hospital, had a ‘bespoke’ one-year programme to train ‘facilitators’ who can drive ‘person-centred culture change’ in other hospitals. News of the communication course comes on the same day when 2018 was revealed as having the worst November on record for hospital overcrowding.
Detailing the changes being brought in, the HSE report, entitled Listening, Responding and Improving, stated: ‘The current activities include participants and their colleagues undertaking language exercises to look at the language they use day to day and whether or not it is person-centred.’
The HSE will also begin ‘observations of practice’ and ‘environmental walkabouts’ in an effort to see hospitals through the eyes of their patients. ‘Feedback is provided about observations to colleagues as a way of identifying what is good about their practice and what could be better,’ the report said.
The exercises come after responses to the National Patient Experience Survey Programme indicated communication needed to be improved. Participants in the survey made 27,438 comments in response to three openended questions in this year’s survey.
When asked what could be improved, the most common issues raised by patients were ‘food and drink; communication between patients and healthcare staff; hospital facilities; staffing levels and waiting times in the emergency department’.
The report revealed ‘a large number of patients’ did not have a positive experience of acute healthcare.
A total of 791 patients commented that they thought communication needed to be improved, and 3,910 out of 8,253 people found they could not, or could only to some extent, find a member of hospital staff to talk to about their worries or fears. In response, the HSE began a programme of support and training for staff on communication skills.
The survey participants were patients aged 16 or older, who spent at least 24 hours in a public acute hospital and who were discharged during the month of May this year.
A total of 13,404 patients took part in the research, and the report read: ‘Even if thousands of people responded very positively to a question in the survey, it is important to note that for this same question, many hundreds and sometimes even thousands of people reported a negative experience of hospital care.’
It comes as new figures emerged showing some 9,679 admitted patients across the country were forced to wait on trolleys and chairs for hospital beds in November.
The figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation show this is an 11% increase on November 2017 and more than twice as bad as 2006, when records began.
It was also revealed last week that in terms of the overall number of people waiting for hospital beds, 2018 is the first year when the annual count has topped 100,000, already making this the worstever year for overcrowding.
‘Environmental walkabouts’