Collecting patient and carer stories from the bedside is Ryde Hospital’s latest initiative to improve its patients’ experience. 

Earlier this year the nursing team at Ryde, led by Deputy Director of Nursing Sophie Lange, set themselves a challenge: how could they use their consumers to educate staff and improve their practice.

“It’s a really difficult thing to do,” Sophie said.  
 

The new ‘capturing the patient experience’ initiative, also known as CAPE, involves staff undergoing story taking training so they can sit down with patients and collect direct feedback on their care. 

So far 14 nursing staff and one allied health worker have been trained to collect stories, and Sophie said after the first month the group had collected 26 stories between them. 

“CAPE will initially focus on gathering the stories of various cultural groups and falls patients to gather feedback – positive or constructive – and change practices as required,” she said.

“The most powerful thing about the initiative is finding out what we can improve on from the patient’s perspective – and it’s won’t necessarily be the things that we thought we needed to improve on.”

In the longer term, Sophie hopes the story taking will become part of Ryde’s culture. 

“Eventually we hope all our consumers’ stories will be heard and their feedback incorporated into the way they are cared for and for future patients,” she said.

Once enough stories are recorded, the team will collaborate with clinical governance and the quality team to identify trends and theme the stories.