Report from a visit to the Lymphoedema clinic - September 2022
On 15 September 2022 two Healthwatch Liverpool staff members visited the lymphoedema clinic in Speke, Liverpool. The visit had been arranged in advance with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, the organisation that runs the clinic.
We worked with Mersey Care staff to design questionnaires so that we asked everyone the same questions. Most of the questions were prepared by lymphoedema service staff. We hoped to speak to patients attending the clinic in person, but as there were not many in-person appointments on the day we also spoke to patients by phone and left questionnaires with Freepost envelopes for staff to give out.
We heard from 19 patients in total: we spoke to 6 people in person, 8 by phone, and received 5 completed questionnaires in the post.
Although we spoke to a limited number of patients, we had several long conversations and received some in-depth feedback. Most of this was broadly positive about the service, but some less so. We shared all the (anonymised) feedback with Mersey Care and made the following recommendations.
Recommendations:
Some of these recommendations are aimed at Mersey Care as the provider of the service, whilst others are aimed at commissioners (who plan and buy services for all of us). Some may be relevant to both the provider and commissioners.
For Mersey Care:
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One member of staff in particular stood out in the number of positive comments we received from patients about their knowledge and attitude. We recommend that the service looks at what this particular staff member does/how they work so that other clinic staff can learn from this.
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Offer all patients referrals/ signposting to psychological support services as a matter of course.
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Arrange a patient support group; several current patients we spoke to expressed an interest, and offer this to newly diagnosed people too.
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Ensure up-to-date tools are available for staff to work with, e.g. one patient had been measured with a laser measuring tool when attending a private appointment and felt that had been more consistent/ accurate.
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Review staffing levels in order to reduce waits and to enable more flexibility to cope with staff sickness.
For commissioners:
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Commission more treatments to support patients with lymphoedema such as lymphatic drainage massage. Look at what lymphoedema services in Blackpool offer.
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Together with the provider consider whether more clinics are needed at other locations to make these easier to access for patients.
