Is the patient-public voice being heard and acted on in Covid recovery?

The last 20 months have seen an unprecedented and rapid transformation of NHS services and models of care which, in other times, would have been supported by patient and public participation. So how are trusts ensuring that patients, carers and the public are involved in the many changes to services and models of care?

We are keen to learn from the experiences of other tCI members. Is patient and public engagement happening the way you would expect? Or is the importance of it (beyond the legal and regulatory obligations) and capacity to involve people being overshadowed by the rapidity and volume of change that continues to be necessitated by the pandemic?

During the first wave of the pandemic, we spent some time reflecting on these issues. Firstly, within our patient and public engagement team at Guy’s and St Thomas’, and then with colleagues in Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals (who joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ in February) and our partners in King’s College Hospital. Knowing we were facing similar challenges, we saw the opportunity to collaborate and develop a two-year Joint Programme for Patient, Carer and Public Involvement in Covid Recovery, which is generously funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, together with King’s College Hospital Charity.

Our Joint Programme

The programme aims to ensure the views of patients, carers and the public informs the ongoing service changes, and we are working with them to understand:

• shifts in attitudes and behaviours toward accessing care now and in the future
• how the changes we are making or have made continue to affect patients, their families and carers experiences’ of accessing care
• variations in the experiences of care between different protected characteristics
• how we can improve and further develop services

The story so far…

We are now a year in. What have we achieved so far?

Attitudes and behaviours survey

We are about to publish the findings of a telephone survey of 1,501 people (conducted for us by Ipsos MORI in May 2021) that explores attitudes and behaviours to accessing care during the pandemic. We chose to use a telephone survey to include people who do not have access to or prefer not to use digital technology. It will come as no surprise that there remain high levels of concern about Coronavirus and that these worries continue to affect how people feel about using health services. A key focus will be on the need for our trusts’ teams to respond to and apply the findings in the context of their own services. The findings will also be used to inform the programme’s three projects.

Patient and public involvement projects

We ran an extensive stakeholder engagement process to define the scope, identify and prioritise the focus of the programme. This included in-depth interviews with 20+ key stakeholders to gather our trusts’ priorities for Covid recovery. Our steering group – which involves patient-public governors and Healthwatch, Southeast London Clinical Commissioning Group, our trusts’ charities, along with clinical, transformation and patient and public engagement leads – then reviewed and ranked priorities. This was followed by online workshops with 100+ participants that led to the development of three projects briefs that are focussed on:

• Virtual access to care
• Waiting for treatment and self-management
• Long Covid

Having completed an open tender process over the summer, we are eager to start the three projects, working with a delivery partner who is strongly committed to co-production and involving marginalised communities.

To be continued…

We look forward to sharing our learning with tCI members as outputs emerge from our projects. In the meantime, if you would like the opportunity to discuss our programme and share your thoughts and experiences from the world of NHS patient and public engagement, then please join us online for tCI’s new forum, ‘The Perfect Blend‘ at 10.00 am, 12 October.

About the authors

Andrea Carney – Head of Patient & Public Engagement

Philippa Yeeles – Patient & Public Engagement Specialist

 Andrea Carney (Head of Patient and Public Engagement) and Philippa Yeeles (Patient and Public Engagement Specialist) are part of a team of five at Guy’s and St Thomas’, which leads on patient and public engagement strategy across the Trust’s numerous major strategic and transformation programmes.

The Joint Programme for Patient, Carer and Public Involvement in Covid Recovery is hosted by Guy’s and St Thomas’ and is a collaboration between the Trust (including Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals) and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Email: engagement@gstt.nhs.uk

Patient and Public Engagement Team, Strategy

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust