Quality of Medical Services in the UK - Report Example

Running Head: Quality Health Service Assessment Running Head: Quality Health Service Assessment Name Course Lecturer Date Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1.0 Introduction 3 1.1 General statement 3 1.2 Scope statement 3 1.3 Thesis statement 4 2.0 Respect for patient values, preferences and expressed needs 4 3.0 Communication and education 6 4.0 Coordination and integration of care 8 5.0 Physical comfort 10 6.0 Emotional support and alleviation of fears and anxieties 11 7.0 Continuity and transition 12 8.0 Conclusion 13 Freeman, G., Hughes, J. (2010). Continuity of Care and the Patient Experience. London: King's Fund . pg. 26 15 Quality Health service Assessment 1.0 Introduction 1.1 General statement This report presents a summary of the quality of health services in United Kingdom in patient’s perspective. It as well gives some actions to improve the level of quality of the health services. In this summary, quality health services will be taken to denote then scope to which persons and particularly patients, carers, friends and family members make use of the health services that they require either by going to where the services are offered (health service places) or services being conveyed where they are or both of them. Quality health services often have the benefits of make it possible for patients and other stakeholders similarly to access and receive good health care services. This report sums up the some improvement areas with some illustrations on the level of quality of the health services. 1.2 Scope statement This report discusses the assessment of the health service from the patient’s perspective in United Kingdom. Quality health service is a collective agenda. It can be incredibly successful more so if all stakeholders take an active role and have a shared vision and purpose to make it of high quality (Hamer, 2008). 1.3 Thesis statement The report is aimed at the government, health partners and the general public at large in seeking to lay out the quality of United Kingdom’s health services. Some issues with locating health services and provision of care in health centres can strengthen social inclusion or exclusion and disproportionally affect health professionals. Public funding of health services has been lacking coherence and in many cases short of any coordination (Hamer, 2008). 2.0 Respect for patient values, preferences and expressed needs The patient should be handled with a lot of care and respect from the health practitioners in relation to their values, preferences and what they would want met as their needs in hospital. They would also desire that they are kept informed often in relation to their ailments. Some of he needs that patients express can include comfort needs such as sleep and rest, values and quality life. According to (Wiley, 2008), common problems that are sighted by patients are sleep and rest disturbances, getting stressed up, being in bad mood and restlessness; hence these are ignored by the nurses in charge leaving the patient unattended. On the other hand, health care can be improved highly by understanding the preferences of the patients visiting the hospitals. It is therefore important to involve the patients in making some medical decisions and also provide them with dignity and show respect for their autonomy. Improvement can therefore happen through responsiveness to needs. This means that health professionals should show care and compassion as the core values for their professional services. It is also vital that health professionals ensure their patients receive and understand valid and consistent information about their rights and responsibilities while in their care. Another important point to note is that patients should be able to formulate and express preferences in order for their ideas to be known to the practitioners during the time of care so that these statements can inform care activities thus ensuring effectiveness. Along with offering clinical guidelines, patient preferences help in giving directions for selecting treatment options and tailoring various interventions. Patient preferences also help in informing choice in clinical decisions where science has yet to provide dominant solutions to health care problems solutions to health care problems. Patient preferences result from cognation, experience and reflection and it’s useful for reviewing the historical antecedents. Patient’s preferences should be highly considered to avoid error and inadequate treatment. Attention to patient preferences as an input into health care decision-making is rooted in the application of decision theory to the understanding of personal choice. Personal values and attitudes that drive individual choice could be understood through mathematic formulations. In order for patients to receive a service responsive to their needs, it is important to recognize that peoples preferences and values as they enter and move through health services. Often people’s needs are influenced by their race, religion, ethnic background and culture and it is important to take these factors into consideration when improving your service to reflect the patient’s need. According to (MD, 2009), fifty patients were given questionnaires asking if it was acceptable for physician to wear slippers, scrubs, short pants or blue jeans and if they preferred them to wear a white coat. The results were that 81% approved scrubs, 74% approved jeans, 57% disapproved slippers and 69% disapproved shorts as attire that is acceptable for physicians. On the issue of white coat, 52% disapproved it. To conclude, it is important the patient’s assessment be put into account by health practitioners so as to ensure improvement and effective services to health services. The pie chart below illustrates the patients’ questionnaire on how doctors should dress. 3.0 Communication and education In order for the health organization to succeed in providing quality service to patients, it must communicate a vision of its objectives to all the stakeholders and train them on how to work towards it. Communicating information effectively to all stakeholders is significant in order to enable patients as well as carers to make informed decisions regarding health care and treatment as well as living with their situations. (International Alliance of Patients’Organization, 2012 p.5)The information provided should be presented in a suitable format that put into consideration the person’s situation, language, understanding, abilities and culture. In addition, advice and instructions and professional opinions given to colleagues should also be in good format. The communication of health and carers needs assessment of major and consensual variables that reflects the breadth as well as the intricacy of health care. Education and training of health care professionals draws from a variety of well known scientific disciplines that offers the supporting knowledge and experience for sound performance (Benchmark Group, 2009 p.4).. This contextualisation of knowledge, understanding and skills is the features of the learning in particular health care programmes. A carer should be aware of the structure and function as well as dysfunction of human body. Additionally, a care must understand the role of health care practitioners in health care promotion and education. The capacity to collect and assess proves and data from various sources and ability to use enquiry methods to gather and interpret information in order to give data that would inform or benefit performance is essential in health care service provision. For instance, it has been proven that contextual factors, in regards to the health care workforce’s contribution, are connected to constructive results in terms of patient safety (Benchmark Group, 2009 p.5). As per patients’ perceptions, the quality of the services provided to them was average. The information regarding their health status was communicated to them but they were not involved when their care providers were making crucial decisions concerning their health. In addition, health care providers understood the function of their patient’s body but when it comes to data assessment, there were some problems since the health care providers failed to get different methods that could have assisted them in getting the required information. 4.0 Coordination and integration of care According to (care, 2013), the arrangements of integration of care should be crystal clear on the contacts and roles that the health professional personnels and professionals as well as all other health stakeholders have with the health services users (patients). The features of care associating mostly with high-quality patient experience are logical. Patients needs to be listened to, to get right explanations from the health professionals to have their queries answered, they want o share and contribute in decisions and most importantly to be treated with the uppermost compassion and empathy. Patients want these aspects of services in team works and in individual consultations. Patients describe the current state of health services as needing some major improvements in terms of personnel, facilities and equipments in their qualities. They assert that they crave for a lot of things from health care comprising smooth transitions and continuity of care as well. These indicate that the quality of planning and coordination of the health services is in question and needs to be improved. Patients says that they necessarily need integration or organisation but they do need deploying of efficient multi professional coordinated care, resources the respect for what they prefer, support for self care and the participation of carers and family members. That's why patients demand integration and integration and integration; they were supported by the carer organisations and service users in demanding for integration as Moher & Altman (2009) notes. Patients wants the health professionals to work together to provide health services to them, they are not interested by mergers and acquisitions. The organisational priorities are not important to them if the health providers cannot practice the priorities in providing health services. Patients expects the professionals to work harmoniously around them and they as well want the services to work mutually; coming together at the point where they are needed and meet the needs of the patients in the round (commission, 2011). Care coordination is in most cases done by family/carer/spouse of the patient because it is poorly developed as the report states. This exposes people who lack family and are single to huge risks in terms of social support. Therefore the quality of the health services is bad; they should be improved to meet the expectations of the health services users. The “integrated care: what do patients, service users and carers want?” reports that the present health system, the social and health care systems are not well integrated, they say that what people are in need of is usually negatively described. For instance, people don’t want to drop through gaps, they want to be remembered about to, they don’t want to have to clarify themselves further to every health professional they come across or they encounter among other things (care, 2013) (page 2). By this there can be some objectives that can be set to enable the patients report what they feel is bad or good in the care they are exposed to. If these indicators are established they would be relevant in to integration. Coordination is very paramount in combining all things up for the service users. The care programmes ought to include comprehensive specifications concerning how, whom and where the care coordination activities will be provided for the patients as the book describes (care, 2013) (page 7). The provider of coordination may not be necessarily be the same health professional who provide services to every patient of a particular type, health status and patient preference are significant. This would accelerate the provision of health services and conseq1uently improve its quality in all aspects. 5.0 Physical comfort According to Pope & Mays (2008) there are crucial issues that come in to light regarding physical comfort of the patients. This is because there are different factors that can make one to be physically uncomfortable such as old age (palliative acre), accidents, enduring mental conditions, stroke among other things. For example, it is reported that more than 92,000 of the patients who require palliative care usually are not reached. This is because there is no even change in to end of life care as the doctors are not certain on when to carry out an assessment to old persons or to refer the patients to other specialised professionals for assessment and so a frail person may be treated as “cure and discharge” basis continuously. Furthermore, the health care providers are short of confidence when communicating prognosis as well as when discussing how to plan care with the patients and their families’ which is especially truthful to other health professionals. Higgins (2008) says that in spite of all this, plans for care need to be formulated, communicated and implemented when looking forward to the future precipitation of physically uncomfortable patients which is so unpredictable, for instance residential care admission or when they are discharged from the hospital must be critical situation to formulate eventuality plans. Physically discomfort persons usually find these pathways to be un-integrated and this result to failures being amplified ensuing to admissions to hospital and dropping offs in social care support or even patients dying in hospitals. This is being reinforced by the review done recently by the palliative care funding which established some recommendations for increasing funding of social care (care, 2013) (page 6). Prescription of medicine, management and use is a principal concern in people’s treatment and care. The qualities of the services are poor and therefore should be improved. Planning of care, gaining the essential skills and understanding it should therefore feature much in new nurse and medical education as well as in training curricula. This is because currently only 10% of asthma patients have personal written asthma action plan in England according to asthma UK, in addition, epilepsy action reports that approximately 13% of persons with epilepsy interviewed had an action plan in 2008 only (care, 2013) (page 7). In essence, care plans are frequently rudimentary or absent in spite of the universal acknowledgment of their values according to specialised healthcare alliance. This prompts improvements of provision of these services in United Kingdom, the quality of the services are wanting. 6.0 Emotional support and alleviation of fears and anxieties Emotional suffering is the range of psychological symptoms altering in cruelty as Carlson and Bultz (2003) explains. Emotional support helps patients and family members deal with diagnosis. Strong emotions in most cases make it hard for patients and carers to iron out issues, worries or fears; therefore it is especially easy for family members and patients to feel cut off. There is a clinically momentous of emotional suffering reported at prevalent rates in cases of anxiety and depression. The level has ranged from 15 to 42% for cancer outpatients according to British Journal of Cancer (2007), (care, 2013). Black et al (2011) adds that interventions by offering emotional support alleviation of anxieties and fears have some accruing benefits and patients carers receive considerable inputs and advise give additional advantage. The extreme stressful experiences is overcome and removed by offering support and this makes it much better. According to this various surveys’ done the level of support for patients have significantly improved, the level of quality have improved across all levels of in the health services providers. A general feeling is willing to help out except not being convinced of what to do for the best of the patient. The level of involvement of family and friends in very good, they unconditionally help out patients whenever there in health complications and or issues. The report says that the family, friends and carers are well informed on how to take care of the patients, they regularly get information on how to take care of the patients and this raises the quality of health services. Family and friends as well as carers assist the health professionals in taking care of the patients Campbell et al (2009). 7.0 Continuity and transition Persistence of care becomes increasingly essential for patients as well as health providers as they age, develop multiple morbidities and composite problems, or become socially or psychologically susceptible. However, in many diverse circumstances, relationship continuity has been valued by patients. Relationship continuity entails encouragement of patients to establish a therapeutic connection with one or more specific professionals in the practice team. Management continuity is necessary and refers to patients being involved in treatment decisions as well as designing their own care, which includes referrals as well as being assisted to pilot services and structures out of the practice. In regards to this, continuity of care appears as a fundamental feature of most descriptions of general practice as well as primary care (Freeman & Hughes, 2010 p.26). A quality health transition improves health-related life of people with difficult health needs, but it depends much on the health care providers than the patients themselves. Unplanned transitions results in acute, un anticipated as well as crisis presentations. The research shows that service providers are well acknowledged on the challenges that are at the line of services that can make the care users to slip through the care net at a time when they are most in need of health as well as social care. The study also shows that as per patients’ perspectives, transition is poorly planned, poorly implemented as well as poorly experienced. Barriers to transitions are not prohibited to age or gender boundaries, this is because, and there can be differences between the organizations and the Government concerning acceptance criteria. In addition, health care providers always take different approaches in the ways in which they work. Common lack of understanding of care patients has impact on transition (National Mental Health, 2011 p.10). According to patients report, the continuity of the quality health care provision was one of the best, whereby the care providers maintained a therapeutic relationship with the patients. In addition, management relationship was also good where care users were involved in every decision that health care providers made. On the other hand, transition not described as the best, reason being the health care providers differed on the approaches to transition. They also failed to understand the needs of their client which impacted transition negatively. 8.0 Conclusion Conclusively, this paper has outlined different dimensions of quality health services, where the care users are either satisfied with the kind of services given to them or not. Understanding of patients’ theory as well as giving them the respect they deserve is very essential in improving the quality of the services of an organization. Communication and education is another dimension that is very essential in ensuring that the quality of the services given to care users is of high quality. In regards to this, the organization should involve all the workers in dialogue in order to make sure that patients are given the best services they deserve. In coordination and integration of care, the patient expectation is to be treated with the most compassion and empathy which the carer must show. In this case, the patients seem to crave for something more than what they get. Old age is one of the factors that the report has shown that can make one to need physical comfort. On the other hand, emotional support assists the patient as well as family members to deal with the diagnosis. In this case, the support of family members as well as friends is necessary since they help the patient to overcome the extreme stressful experiences. Continuity and transition of quality health services is very crucial and when the processes are not well designed they negatively impact the services. Patients seem to crave for something better in transition while in continuity they seem to be satisfied. References Freeman, G., Hughes, J. (2010). Continuity of Care and the Patient Experience. London: King's Fund . pg. 26 Benchmark Group. (2009). Promoting Higher Quality. Scotland: Benchmark Group. pg. 5 National Mental Health. (2011). Planning Mental Health Services for Young Adults- Improving Transition. National Mental Health Development Unit: Scotland. pg.10 International Alliance Organization for Patients . (2012). A Global Voice for Patients. London: Postscript Communication. pg. 25 MD, R. R. (2009). Hawai Medical Journal. A Journal of Asia Pacific Medicine , 265-290. Sons, J. W. (2008). Journal of advanced Nursing. Journal of advanced Nursing , 339-346. Black, A. D., Car, J., Pagliari, C., Anandan, C., Cresswell, K., Bokun, T& Sheikh, A. (2011). The impact of eHealth on the quality and safety of health care: a systematic overview. PLoS medicine, 8(1), e1000387 Campbell, S. M., Reeves, D., Kontopantelis, E., Sibbald, B., & Roland, M. (2009). Effects of pay for performance on the quality of primary care in England. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(4), 368-378. care, N. v. (2013). Integrated care: what do patgients, service users and carers want. london: Integration workstream of the NHS Future Forum. commission, C. q. (2011). mental health act annual report. london: Mental health services. commission, C. q. (2011). mental health act annual report. london: Mental health services. Higgins, J. P. (Ed.). (2008). Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions (Vol. 5). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J, & Altman, D. G. (2009) Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement Annals of internal medicine, 151(4), 264-26 Pope, C., & Mays, N. (Eds.). (2008) Qualitative research in health care. Wiley. com. Read More