>>June Taft: Hello, my name is June Taft. I’m Corporate Assistant Director of Nursing
at Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
We introduced new flexible visiting hours based on several key drivers, mainly the feedback
that we got from our patients and visitors.
The key issue that we actually needed to look at and change was that there was a variation
in the hospital depending on which ward the patient was in. So there was no consistency
in visiting times at all when patients were being transferred to a different ward, say
from our acute assessment areas, visitors and patients were confused. There were issues
on wards as well with the carers being allowed to visit during mealtimes to assist patients
with their eating and drinking and we wanted just to make sure that we had a standardised
approach within the hospital that meant that we could get it right for every patient, every
time.
>>Jane Williams: So the flexible visiting project particularly
adds value around better patient outcomes, especially in some of the areas I work where
we have a lot of patients who make certain lifestyle choices that have an adverse effect
on their health. The flexible visiting project allows us to engage with their family, who
are sometimes their care givers to look at the support that we need to offer them to
enable this person to go on to live independently with support, rather than somebody having
to change their destination on discharge.
>>Gerrard Barker: I’m Gerrard Barker. I’m a volunteer here in Aintree on the End of
Life Companionship Team.
I find with the experiences when I’m going about the wards with the patients and the
visitor, they like the flexible times because if everyone’s arriving at the hospital at
the same time, about half past six at night, it can be manic. Car parking can be exceedingly
difficult. So the visitors find it easier to actually come at different times of the
day. And also it suits the family much better because with having a larger range of time
to visit, the families can come at different times. So if there’s a large family, the
all get the opportunity to come at different times of the day, rather than standing outside
the door and the taking 10 minutes in turns to come and sit by a bed.
>>Karen Davies: So the change was led by the Patient Experience Team. It was a real team
effort and it came about through patients telling us that they needed to have more flexibility
around when their visitors could come in. So we did a lot of engagement around Friends
and Family Test, through anything that had come in through concerns and complaints, and
there was some engagement as well with around the general public with 1,000 Foundation Trust
members were asked about their opinions around visiting times. And all of that information
formed the reasons why we led this project and it was instigated and led by the team.
>>June Taft: I think that flexible visiting project specifically ties in with the Leading
Change, Change, Adding Value commitment five, which is about working in partnership with
our patients and our relatives and our other key stakeholders to improve the experience
and health and wellbeing of our patients.
We feel at Aintree that our flexible visiting project adds value to patients.
I would say to other members of staff who have a bright ideal, don’t sit on it, don’t
be scared, no idea is silly. The team who led the change were not only the patient experience
team but also our divisional senior nurses, our medics and our allied health professionals,
and I can say that I’m very, very proud of them; I think that they’ve done a great
job. They’re not sitting on their laurels. We continue to evaluate what we’ve done,
if needed we will make changes again moving forward; but I think they’ve done a really
good job and I think they should be very proud of themselves and of working at Aintree.