Our representative patient group consists of 12 patients of different ages / ethnic groups / genders / different needs. This group conisisted of 7 males and 5 females, 1 person from an ethnic minority, and with an age range between 25 and 84. There were 2 over 75, 7 between 45 and 60, and 4 who were 35 and under. We felt this group was representative of the practice population.
To form our group we advertised using posters in the surgery and also via our website. We asked patients to fill in form which included sections on age / gender / ethnic group / how regularly they come to the surgery etc. to try and gain a wide range of views for our patient group.
We communicated with our group via email, asking which areas they thought we should focus on to improve certain aspects of the surgery. The group then agreed to that a survey which we had obtained from a company which does GP surveys would be suitable to highlight any issues. We agreed to send to around 150 patients in order to get at least 100 responses.
We carried out the survey and received 100 responses from our patients. These were then analysed and the results were published in the surgery and also on the website.
We emailed our patient group the results of the survey and invited comment, we then suggested areas for improvement based on the results and invited comment.
We were very encouraged with the results of the survey. However we don’t have a benchmark in this survey as it is a new type of survey which we have not carried out before. We feel we will be in a better position to judge our results for next years surveys. For all the questions we scored 81% or over the highest being 98%.
We feel an area we could improve on would be waiting times for patients, in this area we scored 81%. We communicated the results of a survey and invited the patient group to agree an action plan based on these results. This action plan was communicated to the patient group.
1) Offering phone calls where appropriate instead of face to face appointments which will make more appointments available
2) Spreading patient appointments more throughout the morning by extending the hours of our clinics and accommodating emergencies at the end of clinics.
We hope that these actions will improve our result in next years survey.
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