Patient experience
Patient experience and involvement is about putting patients, carers and the public at the heart of what we do. We endeavour to do this by listening to what you tell us and responding to it by making improvements to our services.
We run the Friends and Family Test across the trust, as well as several more detailed national and local patient surveys, so that all patients can share their views about their experience of the care they receive. This feedback is very important to us as it lets us know what we are doing right and helps us understand more about what we need to do to change things for the better.
Friends and Family Test
The Friends and Family Test (FFT) is a measure of patient experience of services and asks patients one simple question:
‘How likely are you to recommend our ward/department/service to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?’
Answers options are on a scale of extremely likely to extremely unlikely.
The vast majority of patients we have surveyed so far have said they were “extremely likely/likely” to recommend our care and treatment to a friend or family member if needed. We are very pleased that these people had a good experience of our care. However, we also know where we have not met expectations and need to make improvements.
Previous test scores
The proportion of patients who “would recommend” the Trust’s services:
Inpatients and Day Cases
Emergency Department
Maternity Services
Outpatients
Community Services
| Key: Comparison with the previous month | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upward shift | Downward shift | Remained the same | |||
Would recommend
Not recommend
Response rates
(921 patient responses)
94%
2%
32%
(481 patient responses)
72%
17%
14%
(Actual patient responses)
95%
1%
98
(Actual patient responses)
92%
3%
1847
(Actual patient responses)
95%
0%
1095
We publish details about how many people completed the Friends and Family Test and what they thought about their care and treatment on this page. The results can also be seen on the NHS Choices website – where you can leave and view feedback too.
Making these results available at regular intervals and at a national level, reinforces NHS England’s commitment to transparency, openness and public participation in health and care.
“Incredible service from start to finish after finding out we were expecting two little bundles. Never once felt any problem was too big. Your staff is the best in the business, especially the night shift midwives. Thank you all so much. You helped make our dream of becoming parents a reality!”
Maternity Services
How can I take part?
Completing the FFT test is easy and quick. We may ask patients for their feedback while they are in the hospital or when they have been discharged through a number of ways including paper surveys, text messaging/SMS, Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) or through the use of volunteers. The feedback is free of cost to the patient and is anonymous.
How are the results used?
From the ward to the board, ward staff members and managers look at the results and we use your feedback to help us improve and make changes to our care and services we provide. The results allow us to take quick actions when there’s a problem and see how effective the improvements we’ve made have been.
“Dedicated and very caring staff, nothing is too much trouble for them. Explained everything to me before completing the procedure. Very pleasant staff, particularly the staff looking after me, in all a very pleasant time despite my medical conditions.”
Inpatient Services
National patient surveys
Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust participates in a number of national patient surveys throughout the year. These surveys are conducted on our behalf by external providers and are sent to a randomly selected number of patients. These are detailed questionnaires that ask patients about their entire care pathway and allow us to see where we are doing well, and where we need to improve.
If you receive a questionnaire as part of one of these surveys, please take time to complete it and return it so that we can learn from your experiences and continue to improve our services.
For further information about these surveys and how they are run, please visit the Care Quality Commission website.
Patient stories
Patient stories are told by individuals from their own perspective and in a healthcare setting, they can provide us with an opportunity to understand the experience of the care they have received. This can help hospital services learn what was good, the bad and what could be done to improve their experience.
Stories are a powerful way of involving patients and carers in shaping quality and safety improvements by focusing on what matters to patients and carers the most.
If you are interested in sharing your story, the Patient Experience Team wants to hear from you, please contact us on 01922 656569 or email.
Involvement
We invite our patients and staff to focus groups and patient panels, allowing us to understand some of the issues facing the trust, and work together to find solutions. We have a number of initiatives such as Patient Information Reading panel and Mystery Patient visitors that involve patients/members of the public in visiting, observing and suggesting changes to running services, as well as co-producing the information we provide to patients.
If you are interested in joining any of our initiatives then please email.