"Appreciating the qualities of a good & effective health visitor"

About: Health visiting / Angus Health Visiting

(as a parent/guardian),

I really enjoyed having our health visitor for our first two children and was looking forward to seeing them again when our third was born in 2022. However at the last minute due to them having other work commitments, I was assigned a different health visitor. This change made us appreciate our first health visitor all the more, for her professionalism and ability to either provide us with correct information or look up any information we asked for, if she did not have the answers right away.

By contrast, the new health visitor would often show up looking flustered, with cold scales to weigh the baby and apologise they had left the equipment in their car overnight and that’s why it was cold. In addition the equipment was unclean.

The new health visitor gave us incorrect information, even once causing us to unnecessarily take our older kids out of school for an appointment for the baby because they had assuredly told us the appointment would take a couple of hours at least. Had they been correct, we would not have made it back in time to pick up the children from school, when it turned out the appointment took less than 20 minutes. Rather than apologising for causing us inconvenience or accepting they were wrong they just said that it was good we didn't have to wait.

A little while later we got another health visitor who came across as professional, clean, friendly, helpful.  In the end I only saw this health visitor once before I was reassigned back to the health visitor who had looked after our first two children. Our last HV wrote a very kind message explaining the change and wishing us well.

Having had three different health visitors, two great and one not so , made me appreciate more deeply the qualities required to be a good and effective health visitor. I highly recommend both our first and last health visitors.  

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Responses

Response from Audrey Rhind, Senior Nurse, Health Visiting, Women, Children & Families, NHS Tayside 9 months ago
Audrey Rhind
Senior Nurse, Health Visiting, Women, Children & Families,
NHS Tayside
Submitted on 22/01/2024 at 08:30
Published on Care Opinion at 08:30


Dear Leighnell,

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback about the Angus Health Visiting service via Care Opinion.

I am delighted to hear of your very positive experiences with 2 of the 3 health visitors who provided care to you and your family.

As a service we use feedback form parents to support continuous improvement and therefore I am keen to discuss some of the points you have raised further, with the aim of identifying appropriate changes or improvements to take forward.

My direct email address is audrey.rhind@nhs.scot and I would welcome contact from you if you feel this would be helpful.

Regards

Audrey

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