#MatExp is a powerful grassroots campaign using the Whose Shoes?® approach to identify and share best practice across the nation’s maternity services.
#MatExp is one of the campaigns that NHS Change Day is supporting this year.
Florence Wilcock, Consultant Obstetrician at Kingston Hospital and Gill Phillips, creator of Whose Shoes? joined forces to lead the way, with fantastic, 'just do it' support from Kath Evans, Patient Experience Lead at NHS England. The campaign is a coproduction with users and families: vital partners in the improvement programme.
Gill was commissioned to produce bespoke Whose Shoes? scenarios around the issues that really matter to people to have the very best chance of a good maternity experience. The scenarios are drawn from real life, from real complaints, from real experiences and they have been co-designed using users of maternity services, feedback from Twitter, other social media, real life cases, women and staff: true co-collaboration.
Sarah Dunsdon and Daryl Miller of The London Strategic Clinical Network provided project management and the team ran pilot workshops in hospitals across London. They produced a booklet which explains the key ingredients of devolved leadership and local ownership, which underpins the project and tells you how your locality could get involved.
It has been wonderful to see mixed groups gathered around a board game in a relaxed environment, with cake and babies. The board games are used to trigger discussions that share good practice and explore challenging and often sensitive issues to see how things can improve. Chief Executives and senior managers have attended and they have valued the opportunity to sit alongside users of their services and front-line staff, having real and free-ranging conversations.
All of those attending join the sessions in multiple capacities: as professionals and also mothers, fathers, sisters, friends and family, with their own stories and experiences. Everyone brings knowledge and expertise from other aspects of their lives. Everybody’s unique contribution is invaluable and the whole ethos is engaging, fun and very inclusive. The sessions work on the principle of respect and equality and the discussion starts from the assumption that ‘best’ can always be ‘better’.
The sessions have all had the benefit of graphic facilitation by Anna Geyer or Carrie Lewis from New Possibilities. Together with the colourful board games, this has made the project very vibrant and engaging. The graphic record serves as a powerful ‘call to action’ and helps inspire the multitude of actions that are resulting from this work, with an element of healthy competition creeping in between the participating hospitals.
There has been a powerful use of social media to grow the campaign and bring in more and more voices. Gill has just published a blog to show how this is happening.
#MatExp is one of the campaigns that NHS Change Day is supporting this year. To find out how you can get involved and what you can do to support better maternity experiences for all mums and babies, visit changeday.nhs.uk/campaigns/matexp.
There is something for everyone. Visit the Maternity Experience campaign page to see how you can act to improve maternity experience.
Why not try the lithotomy challenge? The Lithotomy position is the position for most pelvic exams: the patient is on their back with the hips and knees flexed and the thighs apart. Why not try lying in the position for an hour on NHS Change Day? You could even do this ice bucket style: do it and nominate a colleague!
Look out for some very lively action with Flo and Gill and the team at Kingston Hospital on 11 March, as part of the Changeathon on NHS Change Day!