We are so pleased to be able to share the findings from our evaluation of the Solent NHS Trust response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our COVID Eval webpages summarise what we heard from people across our organisation, and from those that we look after; it’s a mix of personal stories, summarised survey responses and key themes from many conversations and interviews.
We started this work in April shortly after the first lockdown - we’ve been extremely privileged and humbled to watch and capture so much courage, honesty and determination from everyone across the Trust. To hear the care and compassion in everyone’s story as they worked to keep people safe, to learn from the immediate and innovative adaptations that were made, and of the very many selfless acts across our communities.
We were equally struck by the engagement and enthusiasm of people to share learning, to tell their story, to be curious about their services and to listen to views of those they look after.
So many people offered take part that we were able to coordinate 112 interviews and heard from more than 1,200 people. Some services also carried out their own evaluations and shared their resources and approaches to new methods of care; we will share more of these over the coming weeks.
Explore our findings
We've structured the findings from the Solent NHS Trust evaluation in a way that we hope you find easy to navigate:
Overview - an introduction to our findings
Methods - details of the approach and techniques we used during the evaluation
Spotlight on redeployment - a look at our people working in different roles
Spotlight on working from home - we evaluate the shift in dynamics as our teams work from home
Spotlight on remote consultations - an exploration of virtual appointments
Spotlight on frontline teams - taking a look at the rapid transitions our teams made
Our people, their stories - blogs and vlogs from people through the pandemic
Our services, their stories - highlights showing how some of our services adapted
Each section tries to capture key learning points; what worked well, what we could improve going forward, and the top ‘take-aways’. We see this as the beginning of a conversation and that there will be many other views and experiences to share and reflect on, as well as many opportunities to use what we’ve heard as we think about how we support people going forward.
There are so many people to thank: Anna Badley who co-led this work, the whole interview and data coding team, our Side-by-Side colleagues who’ve carried out peer interviews, edited newsletters, written their stories and kept us giggling, those who spoke to us, answered questions, and let us visit, and Talia and Anna who have worked miracles to turn very many pages of text into beautiful webpages.
A special thanks go to Cecelia and her team at the Rapid Research, Evaluation and Appraisal Lab (RREAL) at University College London who have acted as our mentors and academic advisors, giving so generously of their time, insight and wisdom - they are an inspiring team. Finally, to our Board and Executive Team at Solent NHS Trust, who’ve trusted us to get on with this, and share our Solent story with total honesty and openness.
There’s lots still to come on this, but do get in touch with any questions or comments: sarah.williams@solent.nhs.uk