Patient Experiences & Expectations

Good afternoon readers!
I hope you are well (: I know i've been posting quite a lot but I want to make up for all the time that I was absent! Today I'll be talking about the expectations that patients will have of nurses and of their care and how we as health care professionals can improve the patients overall hospital/care experience! Enjoy!

Patient experiences and expectations
*Expect good standard of care from health care professionals
*Good communication between staff
*respect religious views i.e. same sex care
*Feel safe and be heard
*To be treated with respect and dignity

Health care professionals' expectations
*Correct resources to enable effective nursing
*To be treated with respect and acknowledgement
*Not be abused
*To be respected by other staff
*To be paid

Gaps between Health care professional and patients
*Shortage of staff
*Poor management or teamwork
*Lack of training, communication and experience
*Financial constraints
*Cultural differences
*Lack of equipment

Reducing gaps
*Improve staffing levels and education
*Educate patients
*Make patients more proactive in their care
*Reduce paperwork?
*Increase health promotion
*Increase awareness of risks of treatments
*Decrease use of jargon

Main focus of complaints
-Attitude of staff
-Communication failures
-Poor standards

Rights of patients
-To have complaint dealt with efficiently and properly investigated
-To be made ware of the outcomes of the investigation
-To take complaint to independent ombudsman if not completely satisfied
-To receive compensation if harmed
-Make a claim for judicial review if directly affected by unlawful act

How can health care professional engage effectively with patients to improve handling of complaints and improve quality of care delivery?
-Attend to complaint
-Listening and noting
-Checking needs regularly
-Knowledge and understanding
-Communicating
-Patient needs to be kept informed
-Try to resolve internally and not going to the media
-Know your boundaries as a student
-Understand patient expectations and get to know them when admitted
-Be open minded
-Support
-Explain complaint procedure
-Patient understands his/her right and responsibilities
-Have an awareness of advocacy services

Responding to complaints
-Apologise
-Ensure that it won’t happen again
-Decide how serious the issue is and how likely it is to reoccur
-What can be learnt?

Why feedback is important…
*Tells you what is working Helps you to identify the problems and risks and prevent them from worsening
*Highlight opportunities for staff development

Brief introduction to NICE
*An organisation set up in 1999
*Decides which new drugs and treatments should be available on the NHS (I'll probably discuss this is more detail in a later post so keep your eyes peeled!)

Above all...

Think about how your behaviour contributes to the patients overall experience

And that's it!!! I hope you have enjoyed this post! I'll try to post as much as possible. Time is very limited for me at the moment but I will do everything I can to give a weekly update AT LEAST!! (: Enjoy your day!

Emily

Clinical Skills: Eye care

hi guys! this is the second clinical skills post that i'm doing!! yey!! Today we had our first lecture on IPL which is 'Inter-professional learning'. I'll get to that stuff a bit later on...
For now though I'm gonna explain Eye care! Enjoy!!

Eye Care

For this you will need:

A sterile galley pot, gloves and apron, sterile towel, sterile normal saline solution, sterile low-linting gauze swabs, artificial tears or eye ointment.

How to do it

* Assemble the equipment at the patients bedside. Open the sterile towel and open all sterile equipment on to this.
* Pour a small amount of saline solution into the galley pot. Open the sterile gauze using an aseptic technique and place on the sterile towel.
* Wash your hands thoroughly, put gloves and an apron on and inform the patient of what you would like to do in order to gain consent, even if the patient is comatose or unresponsive.
* To remove secretions or crusts adhering to the eyelids and eyelashes, first soak gauze in sterile normal saline solution. Then gently wipe the patients eye with the moistened gauze, working from the inner canthus to the outer canthus to prevent debris and fluid from entering the nasolacrimal (tear) duct.
* After cleaning the eyes, instil artificial tears or apply eye ointment, as prescribed, to keep them moist.
* After giving eye care, dispose of the galley pot, apron and gloves. Use new equipment for each care episode.

Documenting eye care
* Record the time and type of eye care in your notes.
* If applicable, record administration of eye drops or ointment in the patient’s medication chart.
* Document unusual crusting or excessive or coloured drainage and report findings as appropriate

Hope you enjoyed it!

Emily