News

There has been increasing interest in CFEP's Patient Partnership in Care (PPiC) questionnaire, which now over 7000 patients have completed. PPiC is a generic tool which measures the ability of all clinicians to work in partnership with patients with long-term conditions (LTC) to support and motivate self management. As data is collected benchmarks specific to clinician types and various LTC are being produced.

PPiC is a concise questionnaire, contained on 2 sides of A4, and is divided into 2 subsections: the first measuring the patient/clinician partnership, through a series of interpersonal skill evaluation questions, and the second the degree of confidence patients have to self manage their condition. An extensive literature search has revealed that no other tool measures these two parameters simultaneously.

CFEP currently has a paper entitled "Patient Partnership in Care: A new instrument in measuring patient-professional partnership in the treatment of long-term conditions" published in the Journal of Management & Marketing in Healthcare, November 2009, Vol.2, No. 4.

The paper reaffirms the validity of the tool and its reliability and sensitivity to change. In addition, it demonstrates a positive correlation between partnership and confidence to self manage. The better the partnership the greater the confidence patients have to self manage their particular LTC. The paper also shows that when the survey is carried out by the same clinician on two occasions with a training session in between the first and second survey, that results significantly improve on the second occasion. This clearly indicates that by identifying, concentrating on and improving key interpersonal skills involved in the partnership relationship with patients that confidence to self manage LTC can be increased.

How did you score in the “National Patient Survey”?
Many practices are unhappy with their results from the National Patient Survey. Some feedback indicates that this postal survey captured data from patients who hadn’t visited the practice in more than a year and were therefore unaware of access issues.

In response to demand, CFEP UK Surveys has developed a patient questionnaire to help practices measure patient experience of access. It is not designed to challenge the National Patient Survey results but it will enable you to look in more depth at your patients’ views on access. To request further information vist the IAQ web page where you can download an application form or contact Karen Wigmore.

Following on from the successful production of the 8-8 survey, CFEP has now developed a questionnaire specifically designed to meet the needs of Urgent Care Centres.

Although similar to the 8-8 Centres, Urgent Care Centres are often run with nurse/nurse practitioners and primarily run without booked appointments and may be open longer hours. The survey takes into consideration these variables and its aim is to supply centres with a tool which can provide an insight into how the user perceives the centre, its staff and the quality of care received. For more information contact Karen Wigmore.

In the Autumn Newsletter CFEP announces the release of a new survey "Improving Access Questionnaire". Other articles include: Revalidation Multisource Feedback, Urgent Care Centre Questionnaire, "No other tool measures up to CFEP's questionnaire for patients with long-term conditions", ISO accreditation and much more. Download your copy here. If you would like a hard copy of the newsletter please email kerry.powell@cfep.co.uk with Subject: Send Me Newsletter.

Download the latest CFEP Newsletter here. Find out more about Health Quality Accounts, the latest revalidation news, Choice, how PROMs will affect you and how you can take action now to get you ahead of the game and so much more!

If you would like a hard copy of the newsletter please email kerry.powell@cfep.co.uk with Subject: Send Me Newsletter.

A/Professor Michael Greco (Executive Director) and Dr David Jenner (Clinical Director) recently attended the Revalidation Conference held at the Congress Centre, London. CFEP provided an exhibition stand at this conference which was attended by 300 delegates.

The conference highlighted the key issues in the build-up to imminent revalidation. Key speakers included Sir Liam Donaldson (CMO), Dr Malcolm Lewis (GMC) and Mr Finlay Scott (GMC).

Sir Liam Donaldson expressed concern over some MSF surveys that he had observed which showed no or little evidence of proper validation.

A/Professor Michael Greco (Executive Director) and Dr David Jenner (Clinical Director) presented at the PPI Conference on the measurement of patient experience for out-of-hours services.

Whilst patient experience surveys are important in gaining an overall picture of how the service was performing, it was similarly important to think about using other methods of gaining patient views such as focus group and patient interviews. Such feedback enables a richness of views which allows the service to be more focused in its improvement methodologies. In particular, A/Prof. Greco spoke about some of the consultation techniques that could assist clinicians in ensuring their visits were more patient-focused.

The Health Foundation CFEP has been appointed to design and deliver the Advanced Development Programme for Clinicians (ADP) as part of a major nationwide project commissioned by The Health Foundation. This project is designed to demonstrate that increased provision of self-management support leads to improved health outcomes for people with long term conditions. The project runs for three years from 2007 to

The ADP course is designed to enable clinicians to acquire and strengthen the skills they need to provide self-management support. The programme consists of workshops, web-based learning and action learning sets. The workshops are supported by the Patient Partnership in Care (PPiC) questionnaire. (More here)

The Health Foundation has more information on their web site here.

In General Practice, telephone consultations now represent an increasing number of appointments. This trend is set to continue.

Interaction over the telephone represents a unique form of communication. CFEP has developed a questionnaire which gathers feedback on how patients experience telephone appointments with doctors.

Doctors will receive their own confidential report, complete with benchmark scores and patient comments. Results will include guidance on interpretation and advice on how to further develop these specific skills.

The TCQ survey will be available in the second half of 2008. For more information please contact us on 01392 252740.

In 2006 CFEP in partnership with the Peninsula Medical School (PMS) was commissioned to administer the first pilot study of the General Medical Council's Patient and Colleague Questionnaires (PQ & CQ) in assessing the professional performance of UK doctors. This project was successfully completed and reported in 2007. Subsequently CFEP has been commissioned to administer the next phase of the project working with PMS to provide data collection for the research project and offer the GMC PQ and CQ to other trusts across the UK in the form of a commercial package.

If you would like more information please contact us using the form on our contact page. It can be found here.

Improving the experience of patients is at the heart of the NHS quality initiatives. The NHS wants to see a patient-driven, patient-led, patient-focused, and patient-centred service for all patients. A key aspect to this policy is the views of patients.

The national patient survey programme was one of the strategies undertaken to allow the NHS to gather the views of its patients and to allow comparisons across organisations over time. Over the past three cycles of QOF, almost two million patients have completed a CFEP-UK Surveys’ analysed questionnaire. This report summarises the key findings from an evaluation of the IPQ surveys over the past three cycles of QOF.

To download the document in PDF click here Evaluation of three cycles of QOF.pdf