Team | Team composition | Generation of team capital | Improvements made |
1 | Unidisciplinary, low grades: three healthcare assistants and two nurses | Low | One intervention: introduction of a welcome pack for patients. |
2 | Multidisciplinary, mixed grades: ward nursing manager, ward clerk, healthcare assistant and patient experience officer | High | Various and wide-ranging incl: admission packs; staff training; information boards and leaflets; interventions to encourage communication between patients and staff, bedside whiteboards and a ‘what matters to me’ board for patient and staff comments. |
3 | Multidisciplinary, mixed grades: ward nursing manager, activities and well-being coordinator, head of QI and patient experience and a patient experience officer | High | Multiple interventions incl: design of a welcome pack for new patients and a discharge pack; a photo board to help patients/relatives identify staff (and their role); call bell use and response times; socialised dining in the ‘social room’; introduction of a structured activities timetable and bespoke activities; increased 1–1 time with the activities and well-being coordinator. |
4 | Multidisciplinary, mixed grades: ward manager, nursing staff, senior healthcare assistant, patient experience project manager. Later, a pharmacist, medical registrar, charge nurse and junior doctors | High | Ambitious redesign of discharge process, including prescribing, to be more efficient following a series of successful stakeholder mapping sessions; design of information leaflets for patients covering the ward’s most frequent conditions. |
5 | Unidiscplinary, mixed grades: ward manager, two nurses and two healthcare assistants | Medium | Various small-scale changes incl: sympathy cards for bereaved relatives; promoting (and auditing the use of) sleep-well packs to address noise at night; having nurses accompany doctors on ward rounds to help with patient understanding and communication; mainstreaming patient experience into routine ward practices. |
6 | Unidiscplinary, high grades: two quality nurses, matron, ward nursing manager and associate chief nurse for medicine | Low | Small-scale changes, incl: reorganisation of communication at shift handover; ward-based ‘It’s OK to Ask’ scheme (to improve patient–staff communication); trial run of ‘sleep packs’ for patients. Many of the team’s original plans were not delivered on. |
QI, quality improvement.