Women using antenatal services at Walsall Manor Hospital have been given the opportunity to tell staff what works well and where improvements need to be made.

The “What Matters To You?” session was held earlier this week and saw Chloe Taplin and Janet Long from the antenatal team join Patient Experience Officer Lisa Meakin to speak to around 20 service users.

Service users were asked:

“What matters to you?”
“What are we doing well?”
‘What can we do better?”

Women shared lots of views and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust staff collected a host of useful feedback: highlighting good practice as well as identifying areas where improvements can be made.

Kuldeep Singh, Patient Experience Manager, said: “We started using the ‘What Matters To You?’ approach in this trust about a year ago and have had a really good response from everyone. This approach puts service users at the heart of everything we do by working together in partnership.

Donna Perkins, Antenatal Manager, said “The experience, feelings and wishes of all the women visiting our antenatal clinic is of paramount importance to us.

“Whilst we actively encourage women to provide feedback within our friends and family surveys we wanted to explore more deeply what really mattered to our women. Listening  is one of the easiest but most important  things we can do and I thank everyone for their contributions.

“This event resulted in a fantastic array of wishes, wants and praise – demonstrating that women do and want to continue to work with maternity services to ensure we maintain the high standard of women-centred care we continuously strive to deliver.”

We’re looking for women (current and past service users) to join our Maternity Voices Partnership group. The next meeting is on 13 March 2019 from 10am – 12noon on Ward 24 (Foxglove).

Please contact our Community Midwives on 01922 656248 for more information.