Setting: Barley Ward (Stroke Ward), Lister Hospital, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
Background: Lost and missing properties in the wards constitute a stressful situation for bot patients and the hospital. This highly impacts patient experience. In 2022, the patient property loss claims were over £2500 and there was an increasing number of complains related to patients’ property. Logistically, these incidents negatively impact the ward’s budget, manpower, and time in investigating and rectifying these claims.
What matters to you? conversations: The project team listened to the staff members, patients, and family feedback on what a good property management looks like, the barriers and change ideas that they suggest to test as part of the project. The project team listed and acted on these.
Shared Purpose: The team comprised of the ward manager, nurse team leaders, staff nurses, clinical support workers, a student nurse and a quality improvement coach.
Understanding the problem: The average number of property losses in Barley Ward was one monthly. The most common properties lost were dentures, glasses and hearing aids. These were expensive and may have sentimental value for patients.
Project aim: To have zero patient property loss from April 2022 to April 2023.
Drivers: The primary drivers were staffing factors, patient factors and process design. There were challenges around staffing and staff knowledge around managing patient properties. The team also identified patients’ mental capacity as a secondary driver. The team acknowledged that communication (among staff members and between staff and patients) needed to be improved. In addition, the way properties were stored needed revision.
Measurement:
Outcome: Monthly patient properly losses in Barley ward
Process: Percentage of patients who were aware of how properties were stored in the ward, Percentage of family members who were aware of how properties were stored in the ward, the number of staff aware of the trust’s property management policy, patient record audits – properties were agreed to be included in the electronic patient record.
Change ideas tested: Reinforced to staff check at all times, review guidance on patient property management, created bitesize training on handling patients’ properties in the ward, proper documentation of patients’ properties on NerveCentre, visual prompts on patient boards that indicated that they had valuables such as hearing aids, dentures, and glasses, reviewed of patient properties at the bedside during handover, informed patients and families on how properties were managed in the wards, information leaflet on how properties are managed given to patients, including patient properties during handovers, visual cues outside property safe so that properties are taken by patients when they are transferred or discharged.
Outcome: The main outcome was achieved: Zero property losses for 12 months. Patients and families are more aware now of how properties are managed in the ward.
Catherine-Galang-_-Reducing-patients-property-loss-in-Barley-Ward.pdf