Welcome to The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre’s patient experience, engagement, inclusion and involvement commitment. The commitment is aimed at patients and staff alike and was developed and co-produced by patients, families, carers, members of the public.
‘Patient experience’ means what the process of receiving care feels like for the patient, their family and carers. A positive patient experience is defined by the Department of Health and Social Care as “getting good treatment in a comfortable, caring and safe environment, delivered in a calm and reassuring way, having information to make choices, to feel confident and in control, being talked to and listened to as an equal and being treated with honesty, respect and dignity”.
This patient experience commitment is in line with our mission, the core themes of our overall Five Year Strategic Plan 2021-25 and, importantly, our Trust values.
The National Health Service (NHS) Constitution 2015 requires all services to be tailored to the needs and preferences of patients, their families and carers, and for services to be guided by the feedback from patients, families, staff and the public.
At The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, we aim to achieve the NHS’s primary goal to continuously improve care quality, helping to create the safest, highest-quality health and care service. People deserve consistently high-quality healthcare that is personal, effective and safe, that respects their dignity, and that is delivered with compassion.
This document shows you how we will keep to our commitment of providing patients with safe, harm-free care in a clean and pleasant environment. We understand that it is important to you that our systems work well, but also that we are welcoming and that you can have confidence in us. We want the care you receive during each visit to be focused on you as an individual, meeting your specific needs.
These needs may include being provided with timely, clear, jargon-free information or tasty nutritious food. Your thoughts and feedback are vital to us. We currently receive comments in various formats and from a variety of local and national sources but we are continually working on new ways to improve and streamline these processes. We want to involve you and make sure you have a strong voice in everything we do.
Your care is provided by staff who work together in multi-professional teams. They will be respectful and kind to you at all times. However, they need support to do this as there is a link between staff experience and patient experience. We offer various health and wellbeing initiatives for all our staff and are proud to support and adopt Schwartz Rounds – these are group reflective practice forums giving staff an opportunity to reflect on the emotional and social aspects of working in The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.
On behalf of all of us at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, we hope you will enjoy reading our patient experience commitment.
What matters to you matters to us. That’s why patients, families, carers, members of the public and staff helped us to develop this patient experience commitment.
Between February and October 2021, we hosted a number of workshops for patients, carers and staff. Those patients and carers were from different age groups and ethnic backgrounds, and had experience of various types of cancer. The outcomes of the workshops – along with local and national information collected about our services – were discussed with the Trust Patient Experience & Inclusion Group (PEIG) in July and September 2021.
In producing this patient experience commitment, we also took account of ‘sentiment analysis’ – the process of identifying opinions expressed by a patient – in order to determine whether the individual’s attitude towards a particular topic is positive, negative, or neutral. This was carried out during patient experience ‘rounds’ and walkabouts with Non-Executive Directors & Governors between January and September 2021. We looked at comments and shared lived experiences about The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.
As a result of this process, we have developed the following shared aim:
Patient experience is everyone’s business, which then drives improved experiences through delivering care together in an empathetic manner.
As well as our shared aim, the workshops also resulted in the four key themes below being agreed. This will be displayed on the walls at all of The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre’s sites for all to view.
Give patients a leading voice: inclusion and diversity
Give all patients and carers who represent the communities we serve – including those from ‘under-served’ groups – opportunities to give feedback and be involved.
Listen and learn: communication and clarity of information
Provide clear, understandable information at all times. Learn from each other and those with lived experiences to make things better.
Confidence and trust
People will feel confident under the care we provide, feel heard and know that what we hear is used to inform developments and make shared decisions.
Access: simplicity and efficiency
Processes for involving patients will be simple, accessible and efficient.
Effectiveness: impact and value
Publicise the actions we have taken following patient feedback and involvement, and this information will be in formats accessible to everyone.
These key themes and four promises (see below) were approved at the Trust Board meeting in March 2022 attended by Executives, Non-Executive Directors and the Lead Governor.
Some of the suggestions we received at the co-production workshops are shown below.
“This simple illustration is in a patient-friendly visual format that is easy to understand and captures the workshop discussions really well.”
"This looks fab: looking forward to seeing the next stage.”
“I love this, it is amazing! Well done to everyone involved for getting it to this point we are at. CCC’s absolute amazing work.”
“Well done. It looks great and well captured.”
Thanks to involving patients, carers, members of the public and staff when developing our patient experience, engagement, inclusion and involvement commitment, we now have a shared mission to guide us through the next four years (2022-2025).
Our staff at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre plan to achieve our shared aim and our vision by keeping to this patient experience commitment over the next four years.
We are all committed to providing excellent, person-centred cancer care.
We will do this in partnership with our patients, their families and friends, carers and our colleagues, as cancer does not affect anyone in isolation.
Our vision to provide improved outcomes and patient experience alongside the best cancer treatment and care is supported by the following four themes that make up the Trust commitment to you.
We will listen, hear, learn and act
We will communicate clearly in ways you can understand and demonstrate that hearing is happening.
We will act upon your feedback, involvement and engagement, demonstrating that what matters to you matters to us.
We will give patients a leading voice and support each other to develop innovative ways to obtain feedback, involve and engage with you.
We will listen, hear, learn and act
We want to make sure you feel confident and safe under our care. We aim to offer clear and simple ways for everyone to give feedback and to be involved when they want to be.
Collecting your feedback
We will continue to collect your feedback in different ways to suit your needs.
Reporting your feedback
We will work with patient and carer representatives to streamline our committees, in line with feedback we receive.
Acting on your feedback
We will publish regular reports and action plans. We will use ‘You said, we heard’ displays on the department TV screens and noticeboards to keep you informed of local issues.
Personalising your feedback
We will provide individually tailored support for everyone who has concerns.
How we collect feedback
We measure patient experience by collecting feedback in the following ways:
Clinical audits
Patient experience walkabouts
Patient experience stories
Friends and Family Test
Perfect Ward – person-centred audits
PALS, compliments and complaints
Service equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) impact analysis
CQC Adult Inpatient Survey
National Cancer Patient Experience Survey
Division and service surveys
Patient participation group (PPG) focus and support groups
Social media
We will communicate clearly in ways you can understand and demonstrate that hearing is happening
We will do the following:
Communicate with everyone in clear language in a way that is appropriate to that individual.
Minimise the use of medical terms, jargon and abbreviations.
Use a range of communication methods, including electronic methods such as email and through social media.
Always learn lessons from your feedback and share best practice.
Use your experiences to guide our decision‑making committees.
Share reports and action plans in a range of ways to make them easily accessible.
Make sure information about patient experience is available immediately.
Make sure patient experience is discussed by healthcare professionals and departments every day.
Monitor the responses and action plans developed by healthcare professionals and departments.
Improve partnership working between healthcare professionals, patients and carers on all service, research and development and digital changes.
We will act upon your feedback, involvement and engagement demonstrating that what matters to you matters to us
We will do the following:
Simplify access to all our systems and processes to make it easier for you to get involved.
Review the role volunteers play and aim to increase the number of volunteers.
Increase the involvement of a broad range of people, representing the communities that we serve.
Provide support and training for people interested in helping us to shape our services, research, commitment and governance.
Give everyone a say and allow them to play an active role in developing our aims and visions for the future.
We will give patients a leading voice and support each other to develop innovative ways to obtain feedback, involve and engage with you
We will do the following:
Make sure patient involvement is central to the culture at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.
Identify and develop new ways to learn from the feedback we are given.
Lead the way in providing support and training for patient feedback and involvement – for example, improvement toolkits, mentoring, coaching, seminars and workshops.
Monitor and maintain the effectiveness of all patient feedback and involvement.
Thank you for reading this patient experience commitment. We hope we have made it clear that what matters to you really matters to us. Together we will improve the experience of all our patients and strengthen their involvement.
As always, we welcome your feedback and any involvement you feel able to have with us. We want to be an outstanding cancer centre providing the best patient experience and the best cancer treatment. We can only do that by listening to you, communicating with you, involving you and by leading developments on your behalf.
Thank you to all the patients, carers, members of the public and staff who helped us to develop this important document. We also thank the following people for their support.
Our patients, their families and carers
Our Patient Participation Group members
Our Patient Experience and Inclusion Group (PEIG) members
Download a PDF version of this document