Staff at East Surrey Hospital have been busy making changes to services following feedback from patients in a questionnaire.
The NHS Friends and Family Test is seen as key to improving care by giving patients a chance to provide feedback on and rate individual wards and departments.
Surrey & Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, say comments made among more than 10,000 responses since the initiative was launched last spring have already triggered changes.
Comments from patients about noise levels on wards at night has led to a number of changes including revising evening staff rosters and clinical and cleaning work patterns, moving staff desks away from patient beds at night time and installing new soft close bins. Feedback in the Endoscopy Department has led to extra seating and the introduction of staggered appointment times. In Cardiology the staff are providing more information about medications and their side effects as well as more detailed contact information for patients to take home with them. At Crawley Hospital the Trust’s Day Surgery Unit has introduced a ‘focused checking’ initiative so patients are not asked the same questions by different members of staff.
Ian Mackenzie, Director of Information and Facilities, said: “Sometimes it’s the small things that make a big difference to a patient and these can be the things that get over-looked. Listening to patients, and more importantly, responding to their feedback, is key to improving the experience patients have when they come to us.”
Ian added: “We go through the comments people patients and their carers provide about each ward and department across the Trust and there are now many examples where our doctors and nurses are using these to change things for the benefit of future patients.”
