Promoting collaboration in emergency medicine

Background: Collaborative practice between paramedics and medical staff is essential for ensuring the safe handover of patients. Handover of care is a critical time in the patient journey, when effective communication and collaborative practice are central to promoting patient safety and to avoiding medical error. To encourage effective collaboration between paramedic and medical students, an innovative, practice-based simulation exercise, known as Interprofessional clinical skills (ICS) was developed at the University of East Anglia, UK. Emphasising patient safety, effective handover of care and teamwork, within the context of emergency medicine, the ICS promotes collaborative practice amongst health care students through the use of high-and low-fidelity simulation, human factors and values-based practice. Methods: A total of 123 undergraduate students from paramedic (60) and medical backgrounds (63) took part in the ICS. Evaluation data were collected from all students through the completion of an internal feedback/satisfaction questionnaire with 13 statements and one open-ended comment box. Results: The response rate for the questionnaire was 100%. Of the 123 students from paramedic and medical disciplines, 99% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘I enjoyed this session’. Students also felt that the ICS helped them to build mutual respect (98%), enhance understanding of roles (94%) and develop as collaborative practitioners (92%). Conclusion: The ICS is an innovative, enjoyable and meaningful intervention for promoting Interprofessional collaborative practice between paramedic and medical students in a simulated practice setting. It encourages students to gain core training in clinical skills and patient safety, within a safe, supervised environment

You can lead a horse to water . . . what Self-Determination Theory can contribute to our understanding of clinical policy implementation

There has been increasing reliance on policy directives as instruments for shaping clinical practice in health care, despite it being widely recognized that there is a significant translation gap between clinical policy and its implementation. Self- Determination Theory, a widely researched and empirically validated theory of human needs’ fulfilment and motivation, offers a potentially valuable theoretical framework for understanding not only why the current policy environment has not led to the anticipated improvement in the quality and safety of clinical care but, importantly, also provides guidance about how organizations can create an environment that can nurture behavioural change in the workforce. We describe an alternative approach to clinical policy-making underpinned by Self-Determination Theory, which we believe has broad application for the science of clinical implementation theory

PReSaFe: : a model of barriers and facilitators to patients providing feedback on experiences of safety

Objective - The importance of involving patients in reporting on safety is increasingly recognized. Whilst studies have identified barriers to clinician incident reporting, few have explored barriers and facilitators to patient reporting of safety experiences. This paper explores patient perspectives on providing feedback on safety experiences. Design/Participants - Patients (n=28) were invited to take part in semi-structured interviews when given a survey about their experiences of safety following hospital discharge. Transcripts were thematically analysed using NVivo10. Setting - Patients were recruited from four hospitals in the UK. Results - Three themes were identified as barriers and facilitators to patient involvement in providing feedback on their safety experiences. The first, cognitive-cultural, found that whilst safety was a priority for most, some felt the term was not relevant to them because safety was the “default” position, and/or because safety could not be disentangled from the overall experience of care. The structural-procedural theme indicated that reporting was facilitated when patients saw the process as straightforward, but that disinclination or perceived inability to provide feedback was a barrier. Finally, learning and change illustrated that perception of the impact of feedback could facilitate or inhibit reporting. Conclusions - When collecting patient feedback on experiences of safety, it is important to consider what may help or hinder this process, beyond the process alone. We present a staged model of prerequisite barriers and facilitators and hypothesize that each stage needs to be achieved for patients to provide feedback on safety experiences. Implications for collecting meaningful data on patients' safety experiences are considered

The patient reporting and action for a safe environment (PRASE) intervention: a feasibility study

Background: There is growing interest in the role of patients in improving patient safety. One such role is providing feedback on the safety of their care. Here we describe the development and feasibility testing of an intervention that collects patient feedback on patient safety, brings together staff to consider this feedback and to plan improvement strategies. We address two research questions: i) to explore the feasibility of the process of systematically collecting feedback from patients about the safety of care as part of the PRASE intervention; and, ii) to explore the feasibility and acceptability of the PRASE intervention for staff, and to understand more about how staff use the patient feedback for service improvement. Method: We conducted a feasibility study using a wait-list controlled design across six wards within an acute teaching hospital. Intervention wards were asked to participate in two cycles of the PRASE (Patient Reporting & Action for a Safe Environment) intervention across a six-month period. Participants were patients on participating wards. To explore the acceptability of the intervention for staff, observations of action planning meetings, interviews with a lead person for the intervention on each ward and recorded researcher reflections were analysed thematically and synthesised. Results: Recruitment of patients using computer tablets at their bedside was straightforward, with the majority of patients willing and able to provide feedback. Randomisation of the intervention was acceptable to staff, with no evidence of differential response rates between intervention and control groups. In general, ward staff were positive about the use of patient feedback for service improvement and were able to use the feedback as a basis for action planning, although engagement with the process was variable. Gathering a multidisciplinary team together for action planning was found to be challenging, and implementing action plans was sometimes hindered by the need to co-ordinate action across multiple services. Discussion: The PRASE intervention was found to be acceptable to staff and patients. However, before proceeding to a full cluster randomised controlled trial, the intervention requires adaptation to account for the difficulties in implementing action plans within three months, the need for a facilitator to support the action planning meetings, and the provision of training and senior management support for participating ward teams. Conclusions: The PRASE intervention represents a promising method for the systematic collection of patient feedback about the safety of hospital care