Learning from the clinical teams induction day

Last week our innovative two-year programme for clinical teams in palliative and end of life care got underway with an induction day in Stirling. Although our programme is primarily online, it was wonderful and energising to meet our 12 teams, plus members of our Expert Reference Group, face to face.

What matters?

The day started with each team sharing a story from Care Opinion which meant something important to them. Many chose stories which illustrated the elements of good care, including the importance of getting "the small things" right, and being honest and realistic with people not just about their own condition, but about available services too.

The teams also reflected on the responses stories had received. Some responses seemed authentic, human, personal. Others seemed generic - but even a generic response was sometimes helpful to the story author.

Challenges of online feedback

If asking for feedback is hard in any setting, it is doubly so in end of life care. Who to ask, and when? How to word the request? When a family member is seriously ill, or has died, giving feedback is likely to be the last thing on people's minds. Yet without such feedback, how can we really know if care is good?

The teams grappled with other challenges too: how to involve their staff teams so everyone is welcoming of feedback and able to learn from it? How to ensure every story gets a timely, helpful response from the right person on the team? How to keep everyone safe online, especially in small services where patients or staff might be identifiable?

One of the goals of the programme is to share both the challenges and the solutions between teams, and more widely with others, so that we build a knowledge base for how to do this well.

Outcomes of the day

A quick evaluation at the end of the day was very encouraging: people had found the induction helpful, reassuring and practical. The greatest benefits came from meeting other teams, meeting Care Opinion team members, and starting to explore the online platform.

Everyone was enthusiastic to take the first small but practical steps in how they would use Care Opinion in their own particular service. And we're excited to be supporting this process as best we can.

There's a Twitter list of programme members here:

https://twitter.com/SarahAshurst08/lists/care-opinion-peolc/members

What next?

Over coming weeks the teams will be making plans, involving others, learning to use Care Opinion, and perhaps starting to invite feedback. We hope they will share some learning as they go along - perhaps on Twitter or in a blog post.

And we also have a tweet chat coming up, hosted by WeEOLC, on Tuesday 3 October, 8-9pm. The hashtag for the chat will be #coTeams.

Slides from the day

Here are links to the slides shared at the induction day:

peolc-2017-overview.pptx

peolc-2017-evaluation.pptx

(more to come shortly!)