06.10.16
Maternity services providers urged to prioritise user feedback
Maternity services providers should focus on getting feedback from new mothers they have cared for in order to improve services, according to a new report from the King’s Fund.
Maternity is one of the priority areas for reform in the NHS, particularly after the National Maternity Review found that reforms are needed to make care more personalised and improve outcomes.
After interviewing NHS maternity care providers and other stakeholders, the report’s authors said they found an overall “positive picture”, with many providers engaging with users to understand their feedback.
Lillie Wenzel, policy fellow at the think tank, said: “User feedback is crucial for helping organisations to gain insight into the experience of those who use their services and, through that, to understand the quality of their services. As well as helping to shape service improvements, listening to and acting on user feedback encourages a sense of responsibility and pride among staff in the services they deliver.
“Collecting and acting on feedback has a key role to play in implementing the vision set out in the National Maternity Review. We found many examples of good practice which we hope will inspire other maternity service providers to give this greater priority.”
Sarah-Jane Marsh, chief executive of Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Birmingham Women’s Hospital, and chair of NHS England’s Maternity Transformation Programme Board, added that “true transformation of maternity services can only be done by listening to women and families”, as well as understanding their experiences.
“I absolutely support this report and recommend that everyone involved in maternity services embraces it, and uses the passion and energy of women to make their local services the very best they can be,” she said.
The report said the organisations that were best at gathering user method demonstrated a number of common traits.
These included “a multi-method approach”, which sought feedback from different women at different times and in different formats, and involved users at all stages of feedback.
Louise Silverton, director for midwifery at the Royal College of Midwives, said that it was “not at all surprising” that a multi-method approach worked best because of the diversity of the childbearing population.
In addition, the King’s Fund said it was important to “close the feedback loop” and show that feedback was listened to and acted on so that its collection did not “become an end in itself”, and to engage staff and leaders in “a culture of feedback”.
Elizabeth Duff, senior policy adviser at the National Childbirth Trust, said it was “particularly welcome” to hear of cases where “feedback was pro-actively sought from vulnerable women and people from minority ethnic groups”.
The report also noted organisations needed to “devote sufficient time and resources to the collection and analysis of feedback”.
It warned that without sufficient funding, feedback is likely to be “de-prioritised” because of pressures on services, and staff would be less motivated to engage in feedback if they were overburdened with work.
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