First of its kind role to help improve hospital experience for people with disabilities at UHNM
A new role at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (UHNM) is helping to improve the day-to-day experience of patients and visitors with disabilities and learning difficulties.
Lewis Bunn has been appointed UHNM’s first Corporate Patient Safety Champion for Lived Experience, and will work with wards and departments to improve the hospital experience from a patient’s point of view.
Lewis has been visiting clinical areas across the Royal Stoke University Hospital to advise staff on how they can make subtle changes to improve overall experience.
Carol Lloyd-Bennett, Senior Nurse for Workforce and Education at UHNM said: “Lewis was one of our interns from Project SEARCH, an initiative giving young people with disabilities and learning difficulties the opportunity to work at UHNM and gain vital experience to help with future employment prospects. It was during this internship that Lewis started to look at the accessibility issues for those who are differently-abled and availability of suitable office equipment. We discovered that things that were obvious to Lewis had been completely missed by us. There is a real move to have a patient voice in the heart of everything we do at UHNM. Lewis had some stiff competition for the post and it’s fantastic that so many people were inspired to apply to help up in our ‘Enabling people’ journey at UHNM.”
“We want to get the basics right, so Lewis’ job is now to be that voice of the patient with different needs to help influence our decisions in the future. He has already visited areas such as Imaging, our Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit (AEC) and Pre-Admissions, with many more lined up over the coming weeks and months.”
One of the first departments to welcome Lewis was the Fracture Clinic at Royal Stoke.
Dawn Barker, Senior Sister, said: “It was important for us to invite Lewis into our area because we have a lot of patients who use wheelchairs or other walking aids, as well as those who are visually impaired or suffer from hearing problems.
“Lewis was welcomed across the whole department, going into any room he felt he needed to. The only thing which Lewis identified as needing improvement was to improve access for wheelchair users at the front desk.
“We came up with a plan and sorted it straight away, it was a small change that we could make to make at no cost, that would make a big impact for our patients.
“Since the change feedback has been really positive. Patients can now get right up to the reception desk to speak to or hand over information to the clerks. It was something that Lewis could see that we hadn’t identified ourselves from a service user point of view.
“After making the change we thought it would be nice to invite Lewis back to see if he approved of the change. Having him back has been great and him giving us the thumbs up has made us really happy.”
Lewis said: “All the staff I have met have been really up for making changes, and I’m hoping to receive the same reaction across UHNM. Everyone is willing to change what they do which is great for patients like me.
“I feel good and am hoping my job in the future isn’t needed, that UHNM is accessible for everybody.”
Carol Lloyd-Bennett said: “I’m exceptionally proud of Lewis, he has given us a unique and fresh perspective on a lot of issues. We’re incredibly lucky to have him, he doesn’t just see a problem, he looks for solutions to help everyone to make the experience of using and working in our services the best it can be.”