Slam Dunk: New System Improves Patient Engagement

Compared to physical health and wellness services, those of mental health suffer an institutional disadvantage. Even as we become more and more interested in mental well-being, this hasn’t been reflected in the attention given by the media and, when mental health does grace the headlines, it is often for the wrong reasons. Therefore, with all this in mind, there is still work to be done to engage with the public and improve patient care in mental health.

 

Patient engagement has been high on the agenda since the Mid Staffs scandal, as the negligence may have been spotted earlier had the health professionals involved listened to patients’ concerns. However, while this certainly is the case, Dr Ray Johannsen-Chapman, the strategic lead for patient and public involvement at South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust (Slam), asserts that the patient voice can be much more than a safety barometer. According to Johannsen-Chapman, “At South London and Maudsley foundation trust (Slam), we provide the widest range of NHS mental health and substance misuse services in the UK, and believe that everyone who uses our services has a valuable contribution to make to service development and training.”

 

Slam has recently asked Fr3dom Health to design a single system to serve all teams and patients, which will collect and manage patient experience data. This data will then be fed into teams to help improve their services, as well as providing a quality measure for the trust and commissioners (both local CCGs and specialist commissioners) and informing the design of care pathways. Johannsen-Chapman commented, “The patient experience data information centre (Pedic) distilled our existing surveys into core and non-core content, producing a standard structure that teams could build upon to meet their specific needs.”

 

Now, instead of filling out out-dated, pre-printed surveys, the teams deliver their surveys as print-on-demand physical questionnaires and via digital platforms. This ensures that the teams are using the service, as the patient and public involvement (PPI) team can now monitor patient experience across the entire trust. Moreover, the new scheme has already highlighted three areas in which the trust can improve its services; emotional support, privacy and dignity. As Johannsen-Chapman noted, “Slam’s patients now have a meaningful voice that influences the way the trust operates.”

Categories: foundation trust, johannsen chapman, Mental Health, Patient Engagement, patient experience, public involvement, services

A Holistic Approach: What is Osteopathic Medicine?

Geoffrey Smith walks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, introduces himself as “doctor”, but many of his patients would be puzzled to learn that Smith is not an MD. Smith, the medical director at Rainbow Hospice Care in Jefferson, Wisconsin, who treats patients at the Wound and Edema Centre in Johnson Creek and practices internal medicine in Fort Atkinson, is an osteopathic physician.

Though Smith has been a fixture of his local medical community for the past 24 years, his medical discipline remained unknown to many Jefferson County residents until February, when the Wisconsin College of Osteopathic Medicine announced its plans to develop outside of Jefferson. When the US college opens for classes at the former St. Coletta of Wisconsin campus in 2015, it will be the third medical school in Wisconsin, and the state’s first osteopathic college.

In recent decades, the city of Jefferson has been hit hard by the changing economy, and so when city and county officials heard that the school could add $65 million annually to the local economy, they met the Wisconsin College of Osteopathic Medicine’s announcement with enthusiastic support. However, for many of the area residents, a more basic question remains; what is osteopathic medicine?

According to Dr Smith, ‘I suspect many of them are not aware of that. There are a fair number of people who are not aware of the existence of osteopathic physicians, so sometimes it’s an opportunity to explain to them the differences between the two degrees.’ In the US, those who wish to become physicians have two options; obtaining an MD degree – which is the most well known and popular option – and obtaining a doctor of osteopathic medicine degree, carrying the letters DO.

Just like their MD peers, osteopathic physicians complete four years of science and medical coursework followed by a medical residency, and have all the same rights as a medical doctor. They can prescribe drugs, perform surgery and practice any medical specialty. Smith explained, ‘Probably the most noticeable difference was the emphasis on musculoskeletal medicine and the use of osteopathic manipulation. We also [during training] were given some clinical exposure early on. Otherwise, our training is really quite similar in terms of studying the basics of anatomy and physiology, biochemistry and all that sort of thing.’

According to Mike Campea, director of media relations at the American Osteopathic Association – the nation’s largest organisation for osteopathic physicians – one of the unique facets of its training is learning to look at health holistically. ‘They are taught to view the patient as a whole. So they have a good understanding of how the body works as a whole, not just within the body itself, but lifestyle factors,’ he said, adding that this provides a more intimate experience for the patient.

A Holistic Approach: What is Osteopathic Medicine?

Categories: musculoskeletal, osteopathic medicine, patient experience