Changing staff behaviour to encourage dignity and respect

The importance of treating people with dignity and respect has been highlighted in a number of government documents (Department of Health, 2000; 2005), while The National Service Framework for Older People (DH, 2001) specified the need to ensure that older people were treated with dignity and respect and The Essence of Care (DH, 2003) identified benchmarks specifically for privacy and dignity. In November 2006 the Dignity in Care Campaign was launched by Ivan Lewis, minister for care services, to stimulate debate around the issue and ‘The Dignity Challenge’ was issued to health care workers (www.dh.gov.uk/dignityincare). Dignity and respect in healthcare is everybody’s business and is an issue of concern to everyone working in the NHS. In 2002, Southend University Hospital NHS Trust invited service users to an open forum to talk about their experiences of receiving healthcare from SouthendHospital. A video was made of the open-forum discussion showing both patients’ positive and negative experiences. Staff present at the forum were particularly concerned about some of the comments made as they indicated that a minority of staff were not treating their patients with the dignity and respect expected as part of the hospital’s customer care policy. The video was therefore shown to the trust managers and a planned response was agreed to address concerns raised by the patient experiences. As part of this response AngliaRuskinUniversity was invited to develop, in partnership with the trust, an accredited programme that focused on how dignity and respect can be fostered. A programme entitled ‘Fostering dignity and respect in healthcare settings’ was developed and validated in December 2003. The first cohort of students completed the programme in 2004 and the programme has been running regularly since then.