We’ve published an updated charter for CervicalCheck. Our charter tells people what to expect when they are using our cervical screening and colposcopy services. It shows how people can help us make our services work better for them and for others.
What we did
We worked with people who use our services, our staff and our partners, to develop the charter.
We reviewed and updated the ‘CervicalCheck Women’s Charter’ in line with our core values of care, compassion, trust and learning. We incorporated the goals of our corporate strategy, Choose Screening 2023-2027 and our Equity Framework, to increase the value of the partnership between us and our cervical screening participants.
In reviewing our charter we aimed to:
- communicate clearly and effectively about our standards and intent to all participants, stakeholders and staff
- maintain trust and confidence in cervical screening through open and transparent communication in line with plain language standards, our communications values, and behavioural science insights
- provide information to people on how they can help us ensure cervical screening is as effective as it can be in preventing and detecting cervical cancer
- support women to make an informed choice about taking part in screening.
How we did it
Our charter development group was led by our CervicalCheck deputy programme manager. It included our GP advisor, our behavioural scientist, a member of our Patient and Public Partnership, our communications team and our public health consultant. Our group worked in collaboration with Swords Women’s Sheds and HIV Ireland in reviewing and refining the charter.
We began by doing an evidence review of charters from health and public sector bodies. We captured their themes and principles, such as respect; rights; reciprocity; commitment and action.
We looked at our quality assurance standards and drafted our charter statements in line with our standards. We arranged our statements under the 8 principles of the National Healthcare Charter, as follows:
- Access
- Dignity and Respect
- Safe and Effective Services
- Communications and Information
- Participation
- Privacy
- Improving Health
- Accountability.
Community and stakeholder engagement
Our Patient and Public Partnership representative gave us direction on her understanding of what a participant charter is for; areas where we could improve our plain language; and how the charter made her feel about our service. She said we should call out choice more – that “coming for screening is a woman’s choice”.
We then worked with a focus group of women from a range of ages and backgrounds, at Swords Women’s Sheds in Dublin. We asked the group some key questions about the charter, such as:
- Is it clear what a charter is
- Is the information easy or hard to read
- Are there too many medical phrases
- Is the information in the right order, if not what would you change
- How does it make you feel when you read this charter
- Having read the charter, how do you feel about using our services
- Where would you like to see the charter.
The women told us that the charter helped them understand what they had to do to take part in screening, and what sort of service to expect: “I trust the people who are telling me this. I feel like I could go for this test and trust it.”
They said to make the font size larger and to make it shorter, “or we won’t read it”.
They liked the idea that our staff are committed to the standards set out in the charter: “It makes me feel like I’m getting a gold standard service.”
We got similar feedback about the need for plain language and brevity from the women at HIV Ireland. They told us that: “It is a sincere and caring message but say it in less words and people will still get it.” They also asked that we explore different formats, including an Easy-Read version and a pictorial version for people who are visual learners.
To shorten our charter we re-drafted it under six headings as follows:
- Taking part
- Communication and information
- Improving health
- Respect and privacy
- Responsibility
- Safe and effective services.
We did a plain language review and consulted with our staff. They asked us to call out our commitment to our timelines for inviting women, returning their results, and inviting them to colposcopy.
Next steps
We have now published our CervicalCheck charter. It is available for sample takers to download. We will display it for women in our 15 colposcopy units. Our teams will use it to answer women’s questions through our feedback channels, including our info@ email address, call centre and Your Service Your Say.
We will continue to work to uphold our charter and will publish it in our programme reports as our statement of purpose.
We are using what we learned in our CervicalCheck charter project to update our charters for our other screening programmes: BreastCheck, BowelScreen and Diabetic RetinaScreen.