An evaluation at Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to find out how patients with mental illness and clinical staff feel about remote consultations in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has been celebrated with a top award.
Trainee psychiatrist Dr Lai-Ting Cheung won first prize for her work at the Royal College of Psychiatrists International Congress 2022 in the Core Trainee Poster category.
The project, titled ‘Remote Clinical Assessments and Management During Covid-19: Views of the Patients and Clinicians about the Future Preferences’ was conducted in the Trust by a consultant psychiatrist and college tutor Professor Nilamadhab Kar, Dr Lai-Ting Cheung, CT3 Trainee, and Dr Stephen Jiwanmall, advanced clinical fellow.
As the pandemic and social distancing led to the arrival of remote appointments to reduce COVID transmission, the team set out to understand the perception and satisfaction of patients and staff around remote consultations. They wanted to gain a better understanding of their preference for clinical engagement to help plan care in the future.
Patients and mental health staff across the Trust were engaged in a service evaluation exercise as part of this process. These voices also needed to be heard.
Professor Kar said what inspired the exercise: “As a result of the pandemic and remote appointments, it was a very dynamic situation. We needed to know the experience of the patients and staff with remote consultations and their preferences in the future. Following the pandemic, we conducted a survey after the consultations returned to regular face-to-face appointments, resulting in many interesting findings.”
The survey asked participants about their satisfaction with remote consultations and their thoughts on their quality, with people taking part from across specialties in the Trust such as adults, older adult, children, and learning disabilities.
While satisfaction with the quality of remote consultation scored highly, ultimately, the team found that most patients and staff preferred the option and combination of both remote and face-to-face psychiatric.
Professor Kar added: “There was a lot of clinical value to this work as now we know that the hybrid choice should be there for patients.
“We are a learning organisation, so we must utilise this finding to ensure patients and staff feel heard, and their preferences are taken into account to boost the patient’s experience and satisfaction with their care.
“We hope to conduct further service evaluations with multi-disciplinary teams for changing perceptions and experiences.”
Dr Cheung is in her third year as a core trainee psychiatrist at the Trust. She said she was thrilled to receive first prize in the Higher Trainee/Service Evaluation category after presenting the evaluation findings.
Find the complete study in the British Journal of Psychiatrists Open at: https://bit.ly/3ib055U