The types of psychological therapy most commonly offered here - talking treatments of various kinds - cannot be done without patients' active involvement as partners in the treatment process.
Acting on feedback, through consultation with patients and the local community, is one of the main ways the government hopes to improve the NHS. Given our core values, we support this idea. We consult with patients and their families on issues that will affect them.
Our strategy is to involve users in a variety of ways; there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. We gather feedback from a range of sources, both formal and informal. We find out how users feel about our current services as well as consulting users when we develop new services or make changes to services. We collect feedback from our users via the following methods:
- our annual patient survey
- our annual children's survey
- informal feedback fed to our staff
- a feedback box where people can comment confidentially
- complaints
- feedback to our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS)
- focus groups
- events
- user representation on committees
Reviewing this information gives us a much better sense of the concerns, as well as the satisfaction, of our patients. The 2009 annual patient survey indicated that satisfaction ratings with services were similar to previous years and 69% would recommend the trust to their friends or family.
We also have lectures and open days, which the public can attend to understand more about the work that we do. All feedback gained from these events is very important in helping us improve and develop our clinical services and we value it highly.
