The Coronavirus pandemic limited patient visitors to Barnet General Hospital for infection control reasons. Consequently, families were unable to visit their loved ones in their final days. This was having detrimental effects on patient physical and mental health and family experience.

We conducted a Quality Improvement Project where we surveyed patients, families, and hospital staff about the use of video communication. We surveyed staff regarding their confidence of facilitating video communication before and after a guideline was produced. We then asked families, patients and staff whether they found video communications useful.

We found that 71% of healthcare staff surveyed have used tablets provided on the wards to communicate with patient’s relatives. 99% of respondents would use tablets again and 71% expressed no concerns about their use. 77% of staff were unaware of guidelines regarding use of video technology. In response to this we created an information sheet which was distributed trust wide. Subsequently 97% of staff were aware of the guidelines, this also improved staff confidence in facilitating video calls from 55% to 90%. We found that 96% of staff, relatives and patients were all very likely to recommend video communication for further use. With 97.4% of all respondents recommending this service to continue beyond coronavirus times.

Our project showed outstanding results and video communication is now well established in the hospital for all patients. Due to the positive results received in this project our trust received funding for a further 100 digital devises.