Hospital will survey patients’ experiences

United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust is making improvements to the ways it gets patient views to improve the quality of healthcare services it provides.

From Wednesday 1 October  2014, the Trust is introducing the national Friends and Family Test survey to the outpatient departments and day case units at, Grantham and District Hospital,  and other hospitals where it provides services.

The Friends and Family Test is an important way for our patients to tell us about their experiences of care within their services.

When patients leave hospital, or within 48 hours of discharge they will be invited to give their feedback via text or voice calls, by answering one simple question “How likely are you to recommend our ward/department to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?” using an “extremely likely” to “not at all likely” scale. We ask all patients to take a few minutes to answer the questions as your views are really important to us.

Deputy Chief Nurse Jennie Negus, said: “We have a large number of patients using our services and being able to ask as many as possible to give us their very valuable feedback is a huge task.

“Gathering views in real time from people who use our services is really important to identify and tackle concerns at an early stage, improve the quality of care the Trust provides and celebrate successes. The feedback is passed on to the staff on each ward and department to help them improve services by taking action.

“We know a number of our patients, especially younger people prefer to contact us using mobile technology, therefore we are providing as many options as possible so all patients can give us their feedback about what is working well and what we could have done better in a way that suits them.”

The Friends and Family Test was introduced to all clinical areas in 2012, with the Trust being one of the first in the country to pilot the test. It was extended to include our A&E departments and maternity services in April 2013.

Results for United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust and all other NHS Trusts including individual wards are published on NHS Choices, allowing the public to compare hospital performance and make choices about their care.