‘Mirroring’ is an easy approach to get the best out of a person or an organisation you don’t know much about but wish to impress.

I don’t mean to copy their work but to look at how they operate, how they communicate, their visual display of information and then try to mirror them.

The Care Quality Commission recently published their Community Mental Health Survey findings in their newsletter. This enabled the public to view their local NHS Trust survey results.  To see the CQC’s ‘easy read’ report please visit this link.

The Community Mental Health Survey provided information on the following headings, show

ing the patient responses and compared it with other trusts:

  • Health and Social Care Workers
  • Organising Care
  • Planning Care
  • Reviewing Care
  • Medicines
  • NHS Therapies
  • Support and Wellbeing
  • Overall Views of Care and Services

What I liked about this report was the ‘easy to read layout’ packed with really good illustrations against each topic heading.  Pictures can paint a thousand words.

From looking at the report, I could see the value of using this information and mirroring the layout to create survey questionnaires to generate responses from your clients and support workers.  The CQC were obviously very happy to produce and publish their report in this format with a variety of pictorial illustrations. Surely, they would be equally happy to see a report of feedback findings in a similar style.  Which is what I call ‘mirroring’.

Why not use the CQC report findings to help generate feedback questions to ask your clients and support workers.

Here is an example:

What the CQC wrote: Patients could see staff with different jobs when they needed to.  They could see staff who had special skills.

Your question to use on your survey to your clients: When you want to see a specialist e.g. a physiotherapist or a GP is this always arranged in a timely manner to suit your needs?

Here is another example:

What the CQC wrote: Staff knew about mental health laws and rules.  They made sure they followed these rules.

Your question to use on your survey to your staff/support workers: Can you tell me what you understand about the mental health regulations from the document we gave you last week to review?  Can you give an example of how this information impacts on your role and how you work with your clients?

If you need help with creating your client and support worker feedback surveys that meet the Key Lines of Enquiry questions, please email tracey@virtual-administration.com.