New guidance is live for babies, children and young people
Hello my name is Kath Evans, director of children’s nursing at Barts Health and a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline committee.
I’m excited to share that a landmark publication, the NICE Guideline ‘Babies, Children and Young People's (BCYP) Experience of Healthcare’ is live! We are the first country in the world to have specific guidance on BCYP's experience of healthcare!
Sometimes in your career you have an opportunity to be part of something that’s important in setting a standard for improving care. Being part of a NICE Guideline committee to develop resources can provide opportunities like this and I’d certainly recommend the experience to others. Many different approaches were used during its development, including searching out over 27,000 articles and holding 22 focus group meetings with over 200 CYP aged 4 to 14, along with public consultation.
This guideline focuses on babies, children and young people (aged up to 18 years) accessing NHS physical or mental health services, or local authority-commissioned healthcare services, in any setting where this care is provided. It sets out what contributes to good experiences of healthcare.
The BCYP patient experience is directly correlated to health outcomes and other quality measures. Positive experiences of healthcare also play an important part in health equality, ensuring that every contact counts in building up trust.
Children have a right to express their views on decisions affecting them. This guidance shows how listening to and treating BCYP with the respect and dignity they deserve can lead to better care. Sensitive staff interaction can support them to understand what’s happening and be part of the decisions made, with full involvement of their parents especially when they are young or unable to advocate for themselves.
Yet poor healthcare experiences increase the likelihood of unmet healthcare needs. Trauma from poor healthcare experiences is distressing and can have a powerful long-lasting impact, including on confidence to seek healthcare as fear and anxiety around accessing and receiving healthcare can be created.
Ensuring BCYP and the parents of babies and very young children can engage with healthcare positively also has an impact on the smooth running of healthcare services.
This helpful one page summary [pdf] 269KB shares what children and young people want from healthcare; I don’t know about you but as an adult I think I’d like this too.
If you have examples of how you’re working to improve BCYP experiences of care we’d love to hear about it. You can find highlights on Twitter, using the hashtag #BCYPExp
Kath Evans, @kathevans2