Patient stories and patient public involvement

Patient Experience and Engagement Strategy 2023-2028

Working with our patients and community is an essential part of making sure that we deliver effective and efficient health care. It helps to address health inequalities by understanding the needs of our patients and community. This engagement helps us to improve the quality of our services and the sustainable use of resources to focus on what really matters to our community.  It also enables us to develop the right services to meet the needs of the community.

By reaching, listening, involving and empowering our patients and community we can make sure that they are at the heart of decision making and that we put their needs at the core of all we do.

We have established a Community Engagement Group to facilitate the review of our community engagement. The aim of the group is to continuously improve how we respond to community engagement and liaise with the community as part of our Patient Experience and Engagement Strategy. The group monitors barriers to the provision of healthcare and agrees a collective response to managing this whilst also identifying proactive ways of supporting the work of the Trust within the local community.

Patients are referred to the Walk-In Service at the Radiology Department at St. Luke’s Hospital for an x-ray without a prior appointment.

This survey was undertaken to obtain patient feedback on the service following concerns that the numbers of patients attending was having a negative impact on experience and waiting time.

Patients were invited to take part in a telephone survey when they attended the service, interpreting requirements were noted.

50 patients agreed to take part in the survey, of those 41 could be contacted, a response rate of 82% (41/50). Ages ranged from 21 and under to over 65. Ethnicity was reflective of the local population.