From staff on the front line of patient care

staff members’ hats when they are in theatre – where ID tags are not allowed for hygiene reasons – so that it’s easy to identify who is who.

Providing a day service for women with hyperemesis – severe sickness during pregnancy – so they can be hydrated in hospital during the day and go home to their own beds at night, rather than stay in.

Supplying an amnesty bin so nurses can empty their pockets of routine supplies like sticky tape at the end of a shift before going home.

Midwives leaving a calling card for women who are not at their beds for the medicine round, saying they need to take their medication.

Having Facetime or Skype conversations with women in labour at home – rather than phone calls – so that midwives can see how she is holding her body and assess her pain more accurately.

“What makes me really passionate is that we are showcasing how brilliant our staff are,” says Zoe. “We give rewards for people’s ideas; we celebrate them on social media; they are registered as theirs and they will get support from the wider organisation.

“We now have a platform for sharing ideas. It is a positive culture,” she adds. “Having staff feeling that they are valued is a major thing.”

Care Opinion is another excellent example of how technology is giving people a voice. An easy to use public platform, with a feed that appears on the RCHT website, it is linked nationally to NHS Choices and allows direct engagement between patients and their families and staff.

A bit like a TripAdvisor for health care, patients tell their care experience stories and these are shared with the relevant clinical teams, who then give their feedback. “Care Opinion offers a great way for our clinical teams to directly respond to people. It also gives the trust board a direct view of how patients are feeling about services,” says associate chief nurse Frazer Underwood. “The more people we listen to, the more we can learn and improve. We started in April and now we get around 10 to 12 comments a week.

“People tell their own personal stories and that is really powerful. We can look at which stories are getting the most attention and why. Patients are always saying they have to tell their story so many times to different people in the NHS, but here you just have to tell it once and everyone can see it and the relevant people can respond to it.

“A lot of the feedback is really positive and that makes staff feel better about the job they are doing.”

There is also increasing dialogue with the public via social media, the growing RCHT patient experience Twitter feed and the trust’s Facebook page.

‘People tell their own personal stories and that is powerful’