One-Page Patient Passport for People with Learning Disabilities - Assignment Example

? One-page patient passport for people with learning Disabilities The rationale for preferring this article Importance of patient passports The above article has rich information that is helpful to the people with various types of disabilities. The article helps those living with learning disabilities to lead healthy and fulfilled lives. The UK government through this article has recommended various person-centered approaches to many facets of life such as education, health, housing and health. However, many health services have still not yet adopted person-centered approaches. This has still made people with learning disabilities to experience inequality in provision compared to the general population. Hospital staffs working in the emergency and ward departments feel ill equipped to provide high quality care for people with learning disabilities. This is so because of poor communication, distressing and fear of being in an unfamiliar environment and experience traumatic events compared to women caring for family member following stroke. They tend also to experience greater psychological distress and lower the quality of life than men. The NHS The NHS introduced the personal communication passports to reduce the negative experiences of people with disabilities. The passport contains the patient's needs and this helps the doctors and nurses attend to the effectors. In this article, it also affords a number of tools that can help in the achievement of a person-centered approach such as personal futures planning, planning alternative tomorrows and essential lifestyle planning incorporating the one- page patients' profiles. This helps in promoting a consistent approach for persons who are likely to need treatment from a range of care providers compared to stroke survivors who only depend on family members for treatment. Development and implementation of the one page patient The study showed the procedure that was followed in the designing of patient personal passports. The working group determined that the starting point for the passport was was the patients passport from Humber mental health teaching. The document also demonstrated to the working group a good starting point for the evolution of a person-centered passport. After several months, the working group designed a new A4 format for the patients passport that was double sided. The front page had four boxes with key headings in the order of importance, ranging from medical information and communication needs in amber and environmental factors in green. The personal information page provided information and administrative and clinical staff from the emergency and out patients departments (Richard T et al. 2002, 251-258). A comprehensive user guide was also given for careers. Guidance document, two fictions and an easy-to-read consent form was included in the user guide. The guide emphasized that the passport should follow an individual throughout their hospital stay so that the medical staff could keep the passport updated as patients needed change. A discharge co-ordinator also plays an important role in fulfilling the aims of effective discharge planning such as unplanned re-admission and improvement in the organization services. The importance of informing the co-ordinator is reflected in the passport by an inclusion of a discharge co-ordinator signature box and edit box as well. The working group agreed that a pilot study should also be carried out which was completed in October 2009 in collaboration with Macclesfield District General Hospital. During this time, approximately 150 patients received passports. However, some were hand written on templates issued while a majority of the number were type written. With additional support, extra training, telephone advice from working members and issuing of example template's quality improved immensely. People learn through experience Pilot study However, during the course of the pilot, not all the Macclefiled District General Hospital staff knew about patient support. Even the emergency department was not familiar with passport. This was so because the emergency department had not yet had the opportunity to send representatives to the awareness sessions. The pilot study revealed that the pilot study was positive. The staff found that the passport was a very useful document because it provided them with pertinent, clear format and person-centered information (Panayiotopoulos et al. 2005, 99-134). Success of patients passport After the completion of pilot study, a lot of presentations about learning disability forums have been seen all over. Cheshire east partnership board leads in the learning disability policy and practice in the field. Those attending the Cheshire east partnership board included parents, representatives of Jobcentre Plus, service users and senior managers. After the representation, there were requests for it to be duplicated at the new Cheshire East Partnership Forum. The patient passports have been well received by services hence have helped in the improvement of the hospital stay of people with learning disabilities. This is evident from the feedback received from services that have used passports (Patience H et al. 2009, 38) . The passports are user friendly , easily recognizable and simple to store and update. This article is also of great importance since it has created greater awareness of passports in hospitals compared to the other article where the family members have to sacrifice a lot to complete the challenges. The passport success is therefore based on its simple design, a coordinated approach and effective partnership working. The commitment and enthusiasm for patients passport has enabled information about passport to disseminate to all hospital departments. Conclusion Nowadays, going to hospitals can sometimes be a difficult experience for vulnerable people such as those with learning disabilities. Lack of communication is a major barrier to effective communication. This makes it crucial that today the NHS has made things a little bit easier. The health professionals and administrative staff can assess vulnerable information quickly and effectively where time is limited (David Martin 2000). This improves the services as many patients can be attended to by one doctor over a short period of time once everything has been made easier compared to the other article where by the stroke survivor need assistants of others to meet his or her basic needs. This may require long ours leading to fatigue and burnout. The family members on the other hand may not be in a position to provide all that his patient requires as it needs people with specialized experience to take care of them. The passport developments in East Cheshire, though simple but is an effective tool for supporting individuals with learning disabilities. This has enabled the delivery of essential, personalized information to nurses, doctors and administrative staff in as easy to read format. The pilot study results have shown that this tool provides greater opportunities to deliver quality and accurate information to the hospital personnel. This lead to positive experiences of health care for people with learning disabilities. However, the authors of this article are credible I that they have explained various nations where the study was proved right. Cheshire being among the states, the authors have gone ahead to explain why the importance of patients passport as well as how it came about. The passport is seen to be important to persons with learning disability as it provides an effective communication link between the staff and patients. REFERENCES 1. Cumella, Stuart, and David Martin. "Secondary healthcare for people with a learning disability." British Institute for Learning Disability: Department of Health (2000). 2. White, Patience H., and Patti Hackett. "Care Coordination in Transition." Pediatric annals 38, no. 9 (2009). 3. Barnes, Jacqueline, and Annemarie Freude-Lagevardi. From pregnancy to early childhood: early interventions to enhance the mental health of children and families. Mental Health Foundation, 2003. 4. Penson, Richard T., Kara M. Green, Bruce A. Chabner, and Thomas J. Lynch. "When does the responsibility of our care end: Bereavement." The Oncologist 7, no. 3 (2002): 251-258. 5. Panayiotopoulos, Prodromos. "The globalisation of care: Filipina domestic workers and care for the elderly in Cyprus." Capital & Class 29, no. 2 (2005): 99-134. Read More