A meeting with Cornwall Council’s Learning Disability Team prompted led to significant changes in signage at hospitals across the county.
The Cornish Times reported that Cilla Long, a Patient Experience Officer for Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CFT), met with the CHAMPS (Cornwall Health and Making Partnerships), a team of seven people with learning disabilities and autistic spectrum conditions, after discovering that they were having difficulty navigating clinical areas in hospitals.
Cilla worked with the various partners to look at current signage and explore how improvements could be made for people living conditions such as learning difficulties, Alzheimer’s, or dementia.
The newspaper reported that around 1.5-million people in the UK have a learning disability and it’s thought that up to 350,000 people have severe learning disabilities.
Cilla told reporters: “I found it so sad, I was visiting a hospital with one of the CHAMPS when we ended up in the kitchen as he couldn’t navigate the hospital signs. He was distressed and extremely upset that he couldn’t do a simple task like visit a hospital, all because he couldn’t understand the signage.”
Soon after that visit, Cilla and the CHAMPS spent time creating self-explanatory signs for a pilot at Bodmin community hospital.
Cilla said: “We were guided where the CHAMPS thought signs should go and how they should look. We see things through different eyes, and we felt that the CHAMPS would be best to make these decisions. They were delighted to be so involved.”
The Cornish Times reported that since the signage pilot, Cilla and the patient experience team have received significant positive feedback and are now fitting accessible signage into every hospital across the county.
Cilla said: “The pilot has grown. Each hospital provides different services, so there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach. We’re now having to expand our signage to cover all services and places of interest to match the hospital’s requirements.”
Zoe Locke, a patient experience manager for CFT said: “Previously many people with a learning disability may avoid or miss appointments because of the anxiety surrounding finding the clinic or service within a hospital. We hope that the new signs will combat this.”
Ben Law from the CHAMPS added: “The new signage is going to help so many people attend their appointments; they have already changed my life.”
