THE EMERGENCY health champions’ scheme began as part of a wider service improvement project, Right Conversation at the Right Time, to improve interactions between doctors, nurses and patients in two emergency departments (EDs) at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Visitors to the EDs had been confused by what nursing and clinical staff told them, and so emergency health champions were introduced to improve communication. Martin Fischer, who started the project in 2009, said the champions helped to transform patient experience in the EDs. A TRUST in Leeds has become the first to use specially trained ‘emergency health champions’ to support nursing staff and patients in its two emergency departments (EDs). As part of a new acute care project, 15 ED champions from the Altogether Better (AB) organisation, which supports individuals to become health champions in their communities, are offering to help staff at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. The aim of the scheme is to offer reassurance and companionship to the 200,000 patients who visit the trust’s EDs at St James’s University Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary each year. The use of volunteer health champions during the daytime also reduces pressures on hard-working nursing and clinical staff. In the autumn of 2012, about 40 ED champions underwent AB’s two-day health and healthcare training course to prepare for the launch of the scheme in the following March. The background to the scheme is explained in the panel, right. According to director of AB Alyson McGregor many hospitals have enlisted volunteers for extra support over the years but this scheme is different. ‘We work with champions as peers and equals,’ she says, explaining that her organisation has experience in recruiting, training and supplying thousands of community health champions in England. Ms McGregor says that AB has developed an approach that ‘dynamically’ changes the relationship between ‘citizens’ and services and may provide a sustainable business model for the NHS. ‘We work together on the things that are important to champions and the people who provide services,’ she says. ‘Together, we can see new ways of doing things and different solutions to old problems.’ Senior sister Julie Groves has worked at the ED in St James’s for 21 years and is a firm supporter of the health champion scheme. Her nurses say that the champions help provide the holistic care they can struggle to deliver on busy shifts. Ms Groves explains: ‘Nursing staff are reassured when a volunteer is on their shift. They are often too busy to do the tea and coffee, and the holding hands, and are pleased that someone else is around to do these things. The health champions offer companionship and conversation to patients who attend the ED alone. ‘The AB scheme definitely offers extra support for my nurses,’ she adds, explaining that the champions complement the spiritual, nutritional and clinical care already delivered by her staff to patients. Ms Groves says she used to have only one volunteer on duty, one day of the week, which meant she could ‘breathe easy’, but now she has more. ‘Even if it is a busy day, I know patients will be spoken to and given something to eat or drink,’ she says. ‘We have extra reassurance from these champions, knowing they have had a conversation with patients and taken care of their nutritional needs.’ The arrival of the champions has not altered how Ms Groves manages the nursing team, however. Changes were minimal, she says, because her nurses quickly learned about the roles of the champions and the support they need. ‘The volunteers complement the nursing and medical input,’ she says. ‘I would welcome the presence of a health champion or a volunteer on every shift because they make a valuable contribution.’
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Jun 25, 2020
Cherry Lumley + 4
