Patients and staff
Patient experience and staff experience share the same causes
A patient passed between teams and a member of staff chasing for information are often caught in the same gap. Looking at both sides together finds the cause faster than looking at either alone.
Published by leapSTONE
Patients and staff meet the same gaps from opposite sides
A patient repeats their history for the third time. A member of staff spends the start of a clinic finding a result that should already be there. These look like two problems, one for patient experience and one for staff wellbeing. Often they are one gap, between teams or systems, seen from each side.
Why fixing one side alone tends to stall
A programme aimed only at patients, such as better information or a new app, can leave the cause in place and add work for staff. A programme aimed only at staff, such as a wellbeing initiative, does not remove the handoffs that wear people down. Either can be run well and still miss, because the cause sits between the two.
What to settle before you commit budget
- What patients are trying to get done at each stage, and where they stop, wait or give up, in their own words.
- What staff are working around at the same points, and what it costs them in time and morale.
- Which of those moments sit between teams, such as a ward and the discharge team, or a practice and a hospital, and who owns each one.
- Which a new system or service can fix, and which need a change in how the teams work together.
- The measure you expect to move, such as complaints, missed appointments, waiting times, staff turnover or sickness absence, and how you will know it moved.
Why an outside view helps
Everyone inside a health service sits on one side of these gaps. A ward sees the ward, the discharge team sees discharge, and the patient goes through both. Finding the cause means standing where no single team stands. leapSTONE has worked with the NHS on reducing violence in A&E and on improving the primary care experience.
What we do first
Discovery Day is one day with your team and the evidence you already hold, ending in a written view of what the real problem is. If your current plan is aimed at the right problem, we will say so. If it is not, you will have found that out before the budget was committed.
Common questions
How do we improve patient experience?
Pick one pathway where it visibly fails and follow it end to end, across every team it touches, hearing from patients and staff together. Improving one team's step often leaves the overall experience unchanged, because patients go through the whole sequence.
Why are patient complaints not falling?
Complaints usually trace back to a small number of moments where something drops between teams, such as information that does not travel with the patient. Handling complaints faster deals with the symptom. Finding those moments deals with the cause.
How is staff experience connected to patient experience?
They are often two views of the same gap. A handoff that leaves a patient waiting or repeating themselves usually leaves staff chasing and working around it. Fixing the handoff helps both, which is why looking at one side alone tends to miss the cause.
Do we need a new patient portal or app?
It depends on where patients and staff are failing. If the failure sits between teams or in how the service works, a portal will sit on top of it without closing it. Check that first.
Why do patients miss appointments?
Reminders help, but the causes often sit upstream: how easy it is to rearrange, whether the appointment fits the patient's day, or whether they understood why it mattered. Ask the patients who missed, and the staff who rebook them, before choosing a fix.
Who normally asks for this?
Directors and senior managers accountable for a number that is not moving, such as patient experience, operations or service improvement leaders. A chief executive or finance director is often involved once the case is clear.
Talk it through
Most people start with a conversation rather than a fixed choice. We will tell you whether this is work worth doing, and whether we are the right people to do it.
hello@leapstone.co.uk or +44 (0)1483 802862