Safwards

Have a question about Soft Words? Had some experience with using it that you could share and that might help others? Found a particularly effective way of adapting it to your hospital? Please post it here in this section of the forum.

Here's a picture of some of our soft words posters in the office - alongside our champion.

At our recent Safewards Ward Awayday, Caren Ellis and Rhian Jones volunteered to be the Soft Words Champions. At the time, they had no idea at all how they were going to implement this intervention, no plan, no timescale, so I was amazed that very same evening to get a message on Facebook with the most amazing picture, done by Caren after leaving the Awayday. She'd stopped in The Works on her way home, bought a book with lots of sentiments that were obviously created especially for this intervention. She bought a picture frame, and proceeded to cut the phrases out and put them in the frame. She sent me this by Messenger, and I must admit, I was amazed and stunned at the creativity she showed and the unexpected motivation and drive to do this! We have very limited wall space in our office, but when I got to work today, the picture is up on the wall in the office, and it looks stunning. Her plan, and Rhian's, is to change the phrases from time to time, but in the meantime, this first version is lovely. So proud of them both The evidence for the competition is supposed to be the champions with the pictures, so that will have to wait until I'm working with the Champions in Question!
Sian

There are indeed beautiful phrases and the presentation box is very lovely. You are so right to praise them for their creativity and not a little style! I would encourage them to also use the phrases in the intervention page of the website; to get them laminated if possible and perhaps put them above the box to complete the intervention. Soft words is about good communication in known flashpoints where staff have to deny a request, ask a patients to do something and ask a patient to stop doing something, The phases included are a great backdrop to this, but the statements provided in the Soft Wards section of the website are specific to these flashpoints and should also be included.
Thanks for sharing this Sian. It is clear that your away days are a great way to get the ball rolling and to get people up and motivated.

Update on Taliesin's implementation of Soft Words! Following on fro Geoff's comments, we printed off the statements but smaller than the a4 size as we don't have big enough wall space - I think while we have implemented this properly now, I suspect it may develop further on the ward!

Other uses of Softwords can be to read one out at each handover, to have the postcards the subject of ward teaching sessions and for clever IT people to make them into screen savers for the ward. Your champions look like they are adapting to the environment, so it will interesting to see what they come up with - and they look like a creative bunch.