Our survey Understanding Patient Experience During COVID-19 will be closing soon. If you’ve not yet completed it, please do. If you don’t want to complete it online, you can call our helpline and one of the advisers will take your answers and record them for you – anonymously. The helpline number, which is free, is 0800 345 7115.
Call for patients to help with NHS England’s Evidence-Based Interventions programme
NHS England would like patients’ views on its Evidence-Based Interventions programme. This programme aims to review treatments offered by the NHS, to make sure that patients only get treatments that are supported by evidence. This may mean providing newer, less invasive treatments for instance, rather than using more old-fashioned approaches.
NHS England has asked the Patients Association to facilitate a number of focus group sessions with patients to gather patients’ views. The focus groups are likely last 2-3 hours and will be held on 13th and 20th of August, with a further date yet to be confirmed.
If you would like to be part of these focus groups, please email abdullah.mahmood@patients-association.org.uk to register your interest. All participants taking part in the focus groups will be reimbursed with a £50 voucher.
We responded to the first set of proposals by the programme, and will make a formal response to future proposals.
Returning to your GP’s surgery – do you feel safe to go back?
As the lockdown eases, we want to find out how patients feel about visiting GP surgeries, after being away so long.
We want to know if you’re concerned about returning to face-to-face appointments with GPs and practice nurses, what would improve your sense of security, and what measures you think practices should introduce to ensure your safety.
We’re working with Assura, a company that builds and manages GP surgeries and primary care centres, to run this survey. Assura will use the survey’s findings in the design and management of its buildings, and we’ll also share the results with primary care leaders.
If you have 10 minutes, please share your thoughts and you’ll help to make GP practices better and safer for all patients.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is looking for comments on its Complaints Standard Framework in the NHS.
The Framework sets out a single set of standards for staff to follow in handling complaints, and provides standards for leaders to help them capture and act on the learning from complaints.
The Framework is for all NHS staff, everyone who provides feedback or makes a complaint about the NHS, the people who support, advise or advocate for them, and NHS staff who are about the subject of a complaint.
If you would like to read the Framework and comment on it, you can do so by visiting https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/csf. The Patients Association will be submitting a response and we’d welcoming hearing your opinions on the Framework. You can do that by emailing us at policy@patients-association.org.uk. If you submit your thoughts directly to the PHSO we’d still like to know what you think, so please consider sharing your submission to the Ombudsman with us.
Last week we launched our report, Being A Patient, the first report from our programme of work on patient experience.
The report is a milestone in our patient experience work and has shown us which other areas we’d like to explore.
The key areas we’d like to study further include:
Validating our finding that ‘patient’ is the term people prefer to describe themselves in relation to the health and care system
Further work on the use of wider social factors, more patient-focused health and care factors, the experiences of minority groups, and the nature of individuals’ ill health in a new understanding of patient experience
Further research into barriers to change using insight into patient experience, and the development of solutions
Exploring a new alliance or body to lead work on patient experience.
Currently we’ve actively looking for partners to work with on the next stages of this work.
Next Wednesday 22 July 2020, join the RSM for the latest in its series of summer webinars: Brainwear: Lessons learned from using patient-recorded data. Dr Matthew Williams and Dr Seema Dadhania from the Computational Oncology group at Imperial College London join us to explore the lessons learned from using patient-recorded data from brainwear.
The first ten readers to email digitalhealth@rsm.ac.uk with the subject TEN61 will each receive a free ticket for the webinar.
Ruth* called to ask for advice on her concerns about her friend Gladys*, aged 93 who lives several hundred miles away from Ruth.
Gladys lives in her home with her grown-up son, who is in his 60s and has autism. Gladys’s leg was amputated above the knee some time ago and as a result she has problems getting around unaided.
Gladys told Ruth that her GP had stopped medication she had been taking for her heart and breathing conditions. Ruth told the adviser on our helpline that she was concerned Gladys’s GP wasn’t taking her symptoms seriously and had dismissed Gladys’s physical symptoms as ‘all in her mind’.
Ruth was also concerned that caring for Gladys was beyond her son’s ability. About two years ago, social services had concluded that Gladys no longer needed support but Ruth said that Gladys has gone a whole day without liquids when her son has forgotten to make arrangements for her, and that Gladys’s mobility and personal care issues were not being addressed.
All in all, Ruth was very concerned for the health and wellbeing of her friend.
The adviser on our helpline said Ruth should call NHS 111 in the first instance to raise the issues of the Gladys’s symptoms and her lack of medication. We then advised that Ruth contact adult social care at Gladys’s local authority in order to raise concerns about Gladys’s well-being.
Our adviser also suggested that Ruth let the CQC know about the lack of care provided by the GP. Our adviser also invited Ruth to call back if she required additional advice or information.
*Names changed for privacy.
To share your experiences with our helpline team, call 0800 3457115 between 9.30am and 5pm on weekdays or email helpline@patients-association.com. See our website for more ways to get in touch.
Our vision is that health and social care will be delivered in a way that meets every person’s health and social care needs.
Our mission is to give effect to the patient voice, to improve patient experience and support people to engage fully in their own care. Find out more about our values on our website.
The Patients Association is a registered charity in England and Wales (1006733). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (02620761)
Registered address: P Block, Northwick Park Hospital, The North West Hospitals NHS Trust, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 3YJ
