A very warm spring welcome to the COPE Project update!
As we turn to a new season, we thought we would do a little spring clean of our monthly updates. Apart from COPE Project news, we are also introducing within these updates blog posts, where members of Team COPE will share some new research, updates in practice and other news or reflections that are relevant to the project. This month we report on a Twitter chat focussing on experiences of care, as well as the notable reduction in health visiting and school nursing staff.
#ExpOfCare Twitter chat, hosted by @KathEvans2
Experience of Care week took place on 20th-24th March, and during this week many took to Twitter to discuss their experiences of care. Hosted by @KathEvans2, there was considerable talk across various parts of the health care sector, including midwifery and health visiting/maternal and child health. Some of the highlights of this chat included placing an emphasis on asking people ‘what matters to you’ and listening to service users, ensuring that staff are also looked after, and most importantly, acknowledging the value of good communication and applying this in day-to-day practice. The issues raised in this chat echo current research, for example, in our review we found that for midwives and health visitors, an enabler of collaborative work is good communication. Equally, poor communication is a challenge to working collaboratively. Contributors to the #ExpOfCare chat underlined the value of not just communication between professionals, but also with service users. Indeed, this is also something that we have gleaned from our conversations with mothers as well as health professionals.
Did any of you participate in #ExpOfCare? Let us know in the comments below.
You can read more about this event here.
COPE News/Notices
We have some exciting news regarding recent funding. We were recently successful in our application to our School of Health Sciences for funding to organise a half-day of showcasing our findings so far. We will also discuss our current projects and ask for feedback on how they can be tailored to the current practice environment. This day will be held in June. If you are interested in attending, please email cope@city.ac.uk
In addition, the University has awarded us money to develop and run training aimed at helping healthcare professionals work together to provide women continuity of care during and after pregnancy. This project will start in the next few months and will be open to London-based healthcare professionals. We will share more information on this as we develop the workshops.
As ever, we would love to hear from you! Let us know what you think of the changes we have made to our monthly updates, or ask us any questions regarding the COPE project via cope@city.ac.uk.
Until then,
– Team COPE