Revitalizing Care Program in UK Healthcare: Does It Add Up?

BACKGROUND: The National Health Service (NHS) is a publicly funded health service in the United Kingdom that provides free point-of-use services for UK residents. In England, the NHS annual budget currently equates to £106 million. As the global financial climate has changed, so too has the real-terms budget available to meet spiralling healthcare costs in the United Kingdom. There is now unprecedented pressure on NHS Trusts to provide efficiency savings while maintaining the same levels of clinical service availability. In this climate, concerns arise regarding how best to ensure maintenance of the quality of service users experience of their care in addition to efficacy and efficiency targets. Barts Health NHS Trust is the largest healthcare trust in the United Kingdom. A collaboration of stakeholders was established in 2010 to ensure an increased focus on the provision of compassionate care in all patient services as part of enhancing the overall patient experience. This initiative incorporated the implementation of the HeartMath Revitalizing Care Program in order to build staff resilience and enable workers to more efficiently manage their work and personal stress. Additionally, the project implementation enabled the first trial of the HeartMath Revitalizing Care Program within the context of NHS England services. METHODS: Using a pilot program model, the HeartMath Revitalizing Care Program was provided in four departments in the Trust from August to October 2011. Pilot areas included three clinical wards and one reception area. Over the 3-month period, 97 staff members participated in the workshops. Evaluation of the project was conducted using pre and post measures at two time points through the completion of the Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment – Revised 4 Scale (POQA-R4) and review of staff turnover, sickness absence rates, and complaints. RESULTS: The evaluation indicated that the participants demonstrated improvements in nine of the 10 personal qualities categories. These changes were statistically significant in eight areas, with fatigue and calmness showing the greatest evidence of change. Only one area in the rating of organizational qualities showed a statistically significant change, which was expected due to the short timeframe of the post-project evaluation. The results of the pre-post comparison of staff turnover, sickness absence, and complaints were inconclusive. CONCLUSION: The completion of the pilot project clearly demonstrated both a direct benefit for staff and the transferability of the HeartMath Revitalizing Care program to the UK health provider context. Further evaluation is required to determine the impact of building staff resilience on improving service-user's experience of care.