MPS Update

Talking quality

MPS Medical Director, Dr Priya Singh, explains how your feedback shapes quality assurance at MPS

Thank you particularly for comparing MPS so favourably to other service organisations and for strongly recommending MPS to colleagues

Providing members with the highest quality of service at all times underpins everything that we do. So thank you to those who contributed to the online and paper surveys over the last year. Thank you particularly for comparing MPS so favourably to other service organisations and for strongly recommending MPS to colleagues.

However, during July/August, we realised that some members had experienced difficulty in reaching our membership team by telephone. My apologies if you personally experienced delays. I would like to let you know that the higher than usual demand, even for a peak period, for membership advice has been recognised and we have put in place solutions which will ensure that you can speak with a membership adviser promptly.

It is important that we keep asking ourselves questions about service, regardless of how good your feedback has been. With that in mind, this year we piloted an extra element – contacting you by telephone to ask for your views about the service you had received.

I have to say that I thought long and hard about whether or not to introduce this element, as I appreciate how busy you are, and so decided that sending an email in the first instance would allow people to opt out of receiving a call. I am very pleased to report that many members were willing to take part in the telephone survey, and this has allowed us not only to gather information, but also to discuss MPS services and your needs in greater detail.

Your feedback is vital to the shaping of MPS, so thank you in advance for participating in the coming year.

Quality assurance

Our annual surveys ask for the views of members who have used our services – either for advice or membership information. In both areas members have again given our services an exceptionally high rating.

Medicolegal advice

• 88% said they would recommend MPS medicolegal and legal services to colleagues
• 93% gave an overall score of their experience of good, very good or excellent
• 84% said that the service they received from the MPS medicolegal adviser they spoke with was better than other service organisations they dealt with.

Member comments on the medicolegal advice received include: “Very clear advice, with empathy and understanding”.

Membership services

Percentage scoring good, very good or excellent:

• Speed of response – 94%
• Ability to understand the query – 95%
• Tone/professionalism of the reply – 97%
• Clarity of information given – 95%
• Success in resolving the query – 95%
• Overall satisfaction – 94%.

Percentage scoring better or much better:

• Service compared to other service organisations they deal with – 88%.

Member comments received on Membership services include:

“I was given prompt and helpful advice”
“I found the team very knowledgeable and helpful”
“Very efficient and professional”.

Expansion of MPS’s Education and Risk Management Programme

The workshop has a specific focus on providing practical communications skills. It is highly interactive and provides participants with a tremendous opportunity to discuss important areas of concern and interest

In April, MPS expanded its education and risk management programme. The Mastering Your Risk workshop is the first release in a series of communication and risk management workshops for doctors in the UK and Ireland.

This internationally renowned workshop, which has already been attended by 10,000 doctors worldwide, is designed and facilitated by doctors, for doctors.

September onwards will see more Mastering Your Risk workshops being held across the UK and Ireland. Meanwhile, 2010 will see the introduction of a host of new workshops including Mastering Adverse Outcomes, with e-learning options also being made available.

John Tiernan, Director of MPS Educational Services said, “Mastering Your Risk is one of the first educational workshops to be offered widely by MPS to expand on the successful publications and lectures we provide to members.

“MPS’s case experience and international research identifies issues in doctor–patient communication as a major cause for complaints and litigation. The workshop has a specific focus on providing practical communications skills. It is highly interactive and provides participants with a tremendous opportunity to discuss important areas of concern and interest.”

Whilst launching with communication skills, MPS’s education and risk management programme will address five core areas, with future programmes on professionalism and ethics, clinical practice, communication, practice systems and processes, and medicolegal issues.

For more information on Mastering Your Risk workshops please click here.