Healthcare communication initiative – customer care toolkit launch
An award-winning initiative to help hospitals capture improvement ideas from staff and patients has been introduced by healthcare specialist, Echelon Ltd.
‘One Thousand Ideas’ is a three-month long programme enabling patients, users and staff to identify up to 1,000 practical opportunities for improved service delivery.
The initiative, which can be tailored to specific Trust needs, includes an implementation toolkit for use in all staff/PPI situations including expert patient groups and Foundation Trust member groups.
The creative kit offers ways of generating and capturing ideas from patients and staff; visual methods to communicate Trust service principles and employee commitments; means of capturing and communicating outputs and outcomes along with training tools needed to sustain a service improvement culture.
Materials available for ready customisation include:
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Service aims and employee commitments aligned to current NHS imperatives
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‘Tablemats’ for collecting ideas in focus groups
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Posters
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Checklists promoting ideal customer care behaviour
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Advice on collecting, disseminating and managing ideas
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Challenge cards to use in communication meetings and training.
Outcomes from implementing One Thousand Ideas include improved results on national patient and staff feedback surveys; focused engagement of patients/users in contributing to service improvements; staff involvement (and training) for identifying improvements to patient and colleague care.
To date the programme has been rolled out in an acute Foundation Trust and a London teaching hospital. Echelon supported Chelsea & Westminster NHS Trust to win the 2005 Health Service Journal Communication Award for this initiative, it was able to evidence service improvements and importantly the initiative was judged to have made a difference to the population not just the users.
Further information from Jenny Hill at Echelon Learning Ltd on 020 8568 1500; email jenny@echelonL.com.
Echelon, Angles House, 210 Sheen Lane, London SW14 8LB; 020 8274 9965