The Countess Of Chester NHS Trust Case Study

Healthcare communication is very important in the new age of patient satisfaction focused service being provided and emphasized in current practices. This is evident in the case study of The Countess of Chester NHS Trust (“Case Study”). This is a trust that provides a range of medical services to 445,000 patients in North West England. The trust achieved The Friends and Family test rollout targets by introducing paper and online surveys to capture patient feedback trust wide. However, only 68 (<1%) Outpatient FFT responses were received throughout 2015, ranking Chester the lowest in its peer league group(“Case Study”). Results drew the attention of NHS England and local commissioners demanded a rapid turnaround strategy to increase feedback.

etc." that we forget the heart/compassion in the way we deal with patients. Speaking from experience, it does get very hard at times to be able to engage with each and every patient. This doesn't mean that you are less compassionate, just becomes overwhelming at times when you are most concerned with making sure that the patient has good outcomes. This is why it is important for Countess to have real time feedback from the patients to ensure that they are able to make adjustments and coach up their employees. In the case study the discussed the importance of the feedback because “Staff efforts were now reflected in critical mass feedback, boosting morale to see their hard work appreciated. Craig agrees, ‘Perhaps more importantly we can use the vast amount of feedback at our disposal to both celebrate and learn, giving staff a sense of satisfaction and achievement” (“Case Study”). This also is important it could the employees moral boost could assist with fatigue and burn out rate that is common in healthcare, which could cause barriers that could lead to lack of trust by the patient, which would impact outcomes. Critical real time data did not only impact employee moral, it also lead to success through commitment from all stakeholders to make patient feedback the start of improving care, not the endpoint. It was described in the case study that

There is much to know about the phenomena of communication. Interpersonal communication is one of the most important of the basic life skills (Servellen, 2009, 1). Effective interpersonal communication skills are said to be the gateway to the development of other important life skills. Successful professional role development depends on our knowledge and understanding of communication concepts, practice, and evidence. The only way to improve upon communication is by measuring feedback and using this resource to improve. This is why the Countess case study is important. They identified that they were not receiving adequate feedback from their patients and this is important because in order to improve they needed to know where they needed improvement with providing patient care. Through focusing on overcoming the barriers that prevented them from obtaining the feedback from patients lead to more real time data that lead to improved employee moral, buy in from patients and higher quality of care which could lead to improved patient