How experience counts in helping CQC (Care Quality Commision) make decisions

In May this year, we carried out an unannounced inspection of an acute NHS hospital in London. The inspection was part of our review of 100 hospitals in England to check whether older people are treated with respect and how they are helped to eat and drink when they need it.

John, one of our inspectors, was assigned Grace, an ‘expert by experience’, to accompany him on the inspection. Grace is a member of an independent charity which works in partnership with CQC, enabling us to call upon her experience of care, and that of others like her, to support our regulatory work. Grace was one of more than 40 experts by experience who took part in this review.
We find working in partnership with people like Grace extremely valuable in helping us identify care which fails to meet essential standards.

Grace’s experience comes from five years of regularly visiting her late mother in a care home. During that time, she was able to observe first hand the standards of care her mother and the other residents received. When her mother died, Grace was very keen to continue to help improve poor standards of care through becoming one of our experts by experience.
Our unannounced inspection involved visiting two wards where we observed how care was delivered and talked to staff and people who use the service. We prepared a questionnaire for Grace to help her interview older people on the wards she was asked to visit.
Whilst John interviewed the staff, inspected records and the environment and spoke to patients’ family and friends, Grace, who is herself 79 years of age, concentrated on talking to as many of the older patients as she could. They welcomed her company, she was clearly able to empathise with them and they felt confident about sharing their experiences of care with her. At the same time she observed the attitude of staff when dealing with patients, their access to privacy when it was required, and how staff supported them at lunchtime. Grace then met up with John for a debrief on what she had learned and handed him her completed questionnaires.
John found the evidence Grace had gathered extremely valuable in making a judgement about whether the trust was meeting these essential standards and in writing his report on this particular inspection. Patients’ actual experience of how well the hospital is meeting the essential standards of nutrition and dignity could be used alongside John’s observations and what staff had told him.
John’s report about this particular hospital will be published, and will contribute to our national report on findings at all 100 hospitals this autumn.

Source: http://www.cqc.org.uk/newsandevents/casestudies/expertsbyexperience.cfm