Critical Assignment

Module 1 - Critical assignment

Throughout this essay the author will explore the possible impacts of leadership upon patient experience based on a recent patient observation untaken on the 18th December 2017 at the Eye Care Clinic: an outpatient department within Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth. This clinical service was chosen as it deals with a diverse selection of Portsmouth’s population and was recently highlighted, by the trust, to need feedback due to recent friends and family questionnaire feedback.

The area chosen for the observation was a section of the clinic which included a waiting room (between 20-25 chairs) and 5 clinic rooms. The observation was undertaken by two Observer One (the author) and Observer Two (an ex clinician

This resilience has been shown to help managers to enable their staff to withstand the changing needs of the healthcare system. However, this is not something that can be taught, and is not a trait but more of a state of mind including being realistic, in the moment, aware and prepared (Countu, 2002). One main criticism of this observation is that we will have no way of knowing whether the staff were acting as they usually would or whether they were acting differently as they were aware they were being observed, as this has been shown to change the nature of a person’s behaviour and is more commonly referred to as the “Hawthore Effect” (Campbell, Maxey and Watson, 1995). Another key issue is that again these views are subjective and emotion/demeaner are not always universally interpreted. What may have felt friendly to the observers may have felt overbearing to another patient, but without running a larger scale observation these findings would not come to

Staff were welcoming and, despite the organising of the observation taking a long time, the observation gave good insights in to patient experiences and leadership. I think the observation was useful to my partner and I, as it made us feel as if we now had a better insight in to patient experience and its effects on care. The experience itself was good; it was useful to gain that insight. One thing I did realise that was although we thought it went well, the insights we gained may not have been a true reflection of patient experience. To combat this, we could have asked more individuals to conduct the observations on various dates at various times. If we were to do this again, I think we would need to ask patients directly and ask more individuals to participate in the observation. If we all compared notes afterwards it would show how accurate our interpretations of patient experience were relative to