Health research academics from the University of Birmingham have made 18 key practice recommendations to the NHS for improving how their mental health trusts collect and use patient feedback, aiming to improve the quality of care for mental health patients.

The briefing into the findings, released on the 10th October ahead of the full report, found that service improvements in NHS trusts should be made by listening to what works for the patients rather than being led by complaints.  

The collaborative study, which includes teams from UoB, the University of Warwick, the University of Sheffield, Queen Mary University of London and the Mental Health Foundation, found that few NHS mental health trusts in England were collecting patient feedback to actively improve services. 

Professor of Mental Health at the University of Sheffield and chief investigator of the study, Scott Weich, said: ‘Our policy briefing published today highlights the key findings and our guidance for NHS mental health trusts in how they can make best use of their valuable patient experience data.

‘We have engaged NHS stakeholders at every step of the study to ensure our findings were practicable, so today we are calling on organisations like NHS England, the Department of Health and Care Quality Commission to support the NHS providers to implement the upcoming recommendations and drive service improvements centred around patient needs.’

‘There will be resource implications of adopting effective models to drive service improvements, but when used alongside patient outcomes and safety data to drive change, this leads to fewer patient safety incidents, better outcomes for patients and staff feeling more empowered to improve services.’

One key finding of the study was that patients staying on mental health wards prefer to give feedback to clinicians they trust near the end of their hospital stay. It’s also important that relatives and carers of the patients feel able to give feedback without fearing negative consequences for the patient. These findings can help improve the way that NHS mental health trusts collect patient feedback and use this feedback to improve patient experience.’

Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton, a researcher at UoB’s School of Social Policy, said: ‘All NHS Mental Health Trusts are required to collect patient feedback, but prior to this study, we did not have an understanding of how they were using this information. This is the first study to look at how patient experience feedback is used in inpatient mental health settings to drive change and improve the quality of services.’

Dr Fenton went on to say: ‘For clinicians, this report is useful as it highlights the need to learn from positive feedback as well as negative. It emphasises the importance of staff being supported to have the time, support, and skills in order to build trusting relationships with patients that enables them to listen and respond to feedback.’