Your Practice, Your Say..

Our Patient Reference Group helps us ensure that the services delivered by the Practice meet the needs of our practice population.  With the various changes we have put in place to meet those needs over the constraints of the last couple of years, we are currently seeking a few more patients who would be interested in joining our Patient Reference Group. As well as giving us feedback and hearing about some of the new and additional services we are now able to provide, the group will be involved in shaping future action plans arising from patient surveys, as we try to ensure that the Practice meets the needs of its patient population.

Going forward, meetings will be in November each year and take place early evening at the Health Centre. Through the year, other opportunities may arise where we will seek your input in developing your Health Centre - so if you feel you can spare the time please email judith.coulter@nhs.net for more information.

We believe that the Patient Reference Group is invaluable in acting as a main interface between patients and the practice, working proactively to improve services.

It can:

• Improve communication between practice and patients, to promote a clearer understanding from both sides.
• Be a forum to feedback to the practice suggestions for improvement to the services provided to the patients, to the organisation and to the building
• Give input to and help around developing and improving areas such as health education promotion, services available etc to make the messages promoted in posters, leaflets, letters and such like be as effective as possible.
• Encourage self-help and self-management of illnesses by helping to develop a better understanding of the telephone triage system.