How patient feedback is empowering staff

We all want to give our patients the best care we possibly can. They are the reason we come to work every day.

I feel patients are the best people to tell us what they need and want from our services. The challenge is how to make sure we involve our patients to ensure we build our services around them. We need to listen to find out what brilliant care looks like to them, and then to act on this to improve things to provide the best services we can, putting our patients at the centre of everything we do.

Patient Opinion

I have spent several years in my job, listening to patients on a daily basis make the same comments about problems with the service, and in the past nothing really ever happened or changed as a result.

I know myself and my colleagues felt we didn’t have the power to change things as we aren’t managers.

That has all changed since we started promoting Patient Opinion. It has proved a fantastic tool for us to listen to our patients more effectively, to find out what is important to our patients and what they want to make the service the best it can possibly be. It has helped us identify what we are doing right, and more importantly where we could improve.

And more than just listening, it has helped us to focus on what we can change to improve our service. We’ve learnt that Patient Opinion gives patients a powerful voice, which in turn has empowered us, with the support of our managers, to change things for the better.

We’ve made several changes directly due to feedback on Patient Opinion. And it has had a real effect and has benefited everyone. Our patients are happier, we have less complaints, and we’ve found that by listening to our patients, we do have the power to make our service better, to keep aiming for the best care that we can give.