The Values Based Standard™ of Macmillan Cancer Support: A quality framework for improving both patient and staff experience through co-production

Objectives

The initiative was launched because despite more than a decade of patient satisfaction surveys in provider organisations, limited progress has been made in actual improvement. One reason for this may be that work on patient experience has primarily focused on finding out what patients and relatives think about their care. Whilst these mechanisms are useful, in themselves they do not lead to improvement.  They merely tell us the current state of play much of which we already know or could predict. 

In addition, many surveys concentrate on satisfaction rather than experience and the two are not the same.  Research is beginning to indicate that the relational aspects of care may be what patients value the most.  Findings indicate that ‘the quality of technical care is often taken for granted, while patients and relatives comment more often on aspects of experiences and care mediated through interpersonal relationships between staff, patients and relatives’.[1]

In other words the relational aspects of care ‘trump’ the transactional aspects, eg. waiting and décor. The Macmillan Values Based Standard™ sets out eight behavior domains that staff and patients feel underpin the ‘relational’ aspects of care between the patient and the person/people caring for them. 

[1] Bridges, J., Flatley, M., Meyer J., Older people’s and relatives’ experiences in acute care. settings: Systematic review and synthesis of qualitative studies. International Journal of Nursing Studies 47 (2010) 89–107