Evaluating the use of patient experience data to improve the quality of inpatient mental health care (Euripides)

• Very few NHS Mental Health Trusts are currently using patient experience data to improve inpatient services.
• Patients will only give meaningful feedback to staff they trust. Staff need to be allowed time with patients to build rapport and enable more honest feedback to be given. Many patients prefer to give feedback informally.
• No one is too unwell to say how they are experiencing their daily care but patients should be asked for more in-depth feedback once they have reached a degree of recovery that allows them to reflect on their inpatient experience
• Service improvement should not be led by negative feedback alone. Patients often want to give positive feedback and it is important to recognise what works well.
• Ward staff need to be empowered to act on feedback to improve service quality, not just to receive and pass it on.
• Patient experience data is most informative in guiding service improvements when used alongside safety and outcomes data.

The EURIPIDES study aimed to identify how best to collect and use patient experience data to support improvements in NHS inpatient mental health care.

Inpatient mental health services are important and costly, often unpopular with service users and places where serious incidents can occur. The EURIPIDES study examined how patient experience and feedback is obtained in inpatient mental health care settings and how it can be used to create meaningful change.

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