Increasing support for Carers in a hospital setting

Quality Improvement Poster Download

Background & Problems

It is important that we support our Carers who play a key role in our patients care and recovery. It has been shown that when Carers feel supported they are more able and likely to continue in their caring role which improves discharge and re-admission rates. The concern is that access to Carer support is not available on all ward areas and has resulted in an unequable service across the Trust.

Aim

By October 2018 we will improve the access to Carer support on three wards by 20%.

Method

A training pack was produced, and three existing hospital volunteers recruited to act as a carer support resource on the identified wards. Their role was to identify Carers, provide them with basic information and refer them to the Carers Gloucestershire Hospital Liaison Officer.

We tested the method by comparison of statistics prior to the volunteers taking on their role on the 3 wards using previous statistic’s when the Carers Hospital Liaison Officer was engaging with carers on her own.

Results

The impact on carers meant there were more carers who were made aware of the support and services they could access. It meant that the Hospital Liaison Officer could work towards starting carers support on a new ward- Oncology. (Lillybrook and Rendcomb). Ward staff were also made more aware of identifying carers as they had to help identify carers for the ward volunteers.

Implications

Results were not concise due to the various anomalies such as:

• Ward volunteer sickness
• HLO sickness
• Paperwork not recorded corrected
• Ward visiting times changing
• Holidays for both HLO and volunteers.
• Ward volunteers on ward in the mornings with no carers prior to ward visiting times changing.

However, the increase in carers being given or told about the services they can access improved by 53%