Barts Health and NEL co-design a Covid-19 telephone bereavement survey
Barts Health has been supported by NEL to produce a Covid-19 bereavement survey. The telephone survey is being conducted by a range of staff, from different teams across the trust and they are contacting a proportion of relatives who were bereaved during the pandemic.
The bereavement survey work was developed after the realisation that all feedback to the trust, including the routine bereavement questionnaire, had halted. This then made it impossible to understand any impact of change, to the trusts’ approach to working with bereaved families.
Following the government instructions in March, to stay at home during the pandemic, there was a no visitors policy put in place across all our hospitals, except in exceptional circumstances.
It was found that there were implications in the bereavement process, when relatives were not able to visit patients prior to death. Anecdotal conversations with the site bereavement services suggested that many families were struggling with the changes, and this was adversely affecting their experience during a significant life event.
The telephone survey questionnaire was developed by staff in our bereavement services, in collaboration with NEL, to evaluate several emerging issues and these issues form the thematic areas of the survey:
- Lack of visiting
- Difficulties with communication and receiving information from staff
- Not being able to view their relative after death
- Collection of, and missing property
The survey adopts a conversational approach with open questions, allowing for a narrative discussion. The interviews are conducted no earlier than three to four weeks after the death, and each interview is also an opportunity to offer support and signpost relatives to other agencies.
Barts Health Performance Team assisted in identifying the number of Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 deaths from March to the 23 May 2020, so the service then applied to people who died from any diagnosis. With support from the NEL CSU team a sample 87 interviewees were identified, giving a 95% confidence in the results and a 20% margin of error.
Experienced staff that are familiar with conducting difficult and complex conversations have been recruited from several trust departments including complaints, bereavement and organ donation teams, and are helping with up to ten interviews each. Weekly support is provided, and a short training session was offered before the interviews started.
All interviews will be complete by mid-June as this information is vital to the trust. Barts Health and NEL expect there will be huge learning and a better understanding of the issues that bereaved families have faced, which will inform future service provision.
For further information please contact:
Alison Hill, Director of Cancer and Palliative Care Nursing, Barts Health; alison.hill8@nhs.net
Jan Annan, Associate Director of Improvement & Service Transformation, NEL; jannan@nhs.net