P-185 Helping our staff feel valued and recognised through positive feedback during the COVID-19 pandemic

In our hospice we work with an amazing group of colleagues who frequently go above and beyond for our patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic staff continued a fantastic level of patient-centred care, however, due to COVID-19 restrictions events such as parties and family gatherings couldn’t be arranged. These events are some of the ways in which we make each day matter for our patients and we felt that staff often gained value from this. We wanted our staff to feel valued and recognised for small things, still possible despite COVID-19 restrictions, which they do everyday without thinking, that help to brighten a patient’s day. We designed a system to supply positive feedback to staff that was both COVID-19 safe and efficient. We designed a poster which could be laminated and distributed around the organisation with a QR code linking to a Google form. This could be scanned by any colleague and asked for the information to be fed back with an option of anonymity. An email was then sent from a ‘positive feedback’ mail box to the recipient with the positive feedback. Over a four month period, over 100 messages of positive feedback have been sent out amongst colleagues. Overwhelmingly these have received a positive response and helped colleagues feel ‘valued’ and ‘empowered’. Feedback forms have been submitted across a wide range of staff groups and have contained a huge range of feedback; from general words of encouragement to tales of amazing teachers, fantastic hairdressing and fixed glasses. This project has been important for staff morale through difficult times. We hugely value the effort made every day by our colleagues and it is important to ensure our colleagues feel valued for the work that they do. We now plan to extend this project beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.