Mayfield Surgery Patient Participation Group

A Patient Participation Group is a unique and evolving opportunity for the patient body to interact with a surgery. Most commonly they work on local needs to offer the patient perspective on the services that are provided. PPGS can also help to improve communication and to encourage patients to take more responsibility for their personal health and to provide effective practical support.

At Mayfield Surgery we hope that for the patients will benefit with improved communications with staff and have a forum to suggest positive ideas and voice concerns. We also hope that it will be an opportunity to offer educational talks for patients based on local needs. For the practice we will be able to plan services jointly with patients in order to increase their effectiveness. Overall we see this as an exciting opportunity for the practice to get closer to the Roehampton and Putney community.

We hope that the PPG will be part of other community initiatives such as Local Involvement Network ( LINK) and the Local Commissioning Group ( LCG).

We used the British Medical Association guidance to document this report and six step process to then publicise our findings on our website.

STEP 1

Establishing a Patient Participation Group

In order to setup our patient reference group or patient participation group (PPG), we first looked at what has been tried historically at Mayfield to set up such a group. We had advertised for some time in the waiting room and had had informal talks with some interested patients. However, this never seemed to develop into a robust, regularly meeting patient group. We realised that we were going to have to be more direct in order to develop this and allow the process to be more inclusive of our patient demographics and vast difference in type of patient.

We used the following methods to recruit patients:

  • Put up posters in the waiting room (See Appendix 1)
  • Offered leaflets to patients attending the waiting room area
  • Put information on the practice website (
  • Wrote to patients who had demonstrated interest to staff (See Appendix 2)

We looked at our practice data and did some work looking at demographics to ensure that we tried to contact patients from each group. (SeeAppendix 3)

We also looked at our mental health patients, learning disability patients and carers to try and enlist members from these groups. The clinicians asked patients at the end of consultations from groups that were not represented or hadn’t come forward initially. This worked initially and we were able to write to individuals and carers. However, understandably our patients are very busy and were not able to attend meetings due to busy work, social and other commitments. We tried to get round this by emailing minutes to the group and asking for feedback on this. We also emailed a copy of the patient survey and asked for feedback on this too. This ensured that we were as inclusive as possible. We plan to, for future meetings, rotate times of meetings to lunchtime, evenings and weekends to ensure that we have maximum attendance and have fair representation.

STEP 2

Method and Process for Agreeing Priorities for the Local Practice Survey

At our first PPG meeting we discussed the upcoming survey and came up with questions they thought should be asked to the patient population. Please see table below of the questions suggested by group members.

We also looked at complaints and comments that patients, carers and other community members had made to the practice staff. We looked at questions for the national patient survey and in particular looked at issues that were relevant from the Wandsworth PCT Department of Health Survey. We also tried to involve issues from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that were relevant and help us provide a better service for our patients.

Those that were unable to attend the PPG meeting received an e-mail to comment on the suggestions above and share their ideas on the most important issues and key priorities for the patient survey. We did not always receive replies from all our members, but again we understand that people have busy schedules and we will discuss with the group in further meetings the best way of achieving maximum participation.

STEP 3

Collating patient views and results through a patient survey

We used the patient group feedback and other questions suggested by Mayfield staff and management to compile our patient survey. We sent the preliminary survey to our patient group for feedback and took into account their corrections to wording and style of the survey.

We added a patient demographic section to get an idea of whether we were surveying an appropriate range of ages, genders and ethnicities. We were limited by space because we limited the survey to one page front and back – as suggested by members of our patient group - and therefore had to use quite general ethnic categories.

We discussed with our PPG the best way of canvassing the local population and they felt that the option to begin with would be have the survey as a paper format for all too optionally do on entry to the surgery. Surveys were distributed by reception to patients in the waiting room over a three week period. We aimed to survey approximately 200 patients in that time period.

We realise that distributing paper surveys to patients that come to the surgery only targets those patients using the surgery services and those that come in frequently. We aim to use other distribution methods such as adding the survey to the website for patients to respond from home in the future. We could also send patients that were interested a paper copy if they did not have access to the internet and did not come in to the surgery in that time frame. Again these are issues that we can continue to work on with our PPG.

STEP 4

Discussing Survey with Patient Reference Group

At the second PPG meeting, we discussed the survey responses. Please see excerpt from the minutes below:

Review of appointment/booking survey questions – There was quite positive feedback. Regarding the small amount of negative answers, there were comment saying that we hope this will continue to improve as patients are re-educate about the new appointments system (6 weeks of appointments available) and not having to call in the morning.

Suggestions:

  • other ways to notify patients about appointment system – information on right side of script, sign in waiting room, message on the phone.
  • also consider a message on the phones to give info for routine appointments book 6 week in advance, also 8-9:30 is the busiest time on the phone, please call back outside of these hours for routine matters. (or option for “press 3 for information about telephone and appointments?)
  • also perhaps booking appointments online will make less phone traffic and receptionists will be able to answer more quickly.

Review of Staff – courteousness of reception- happy with courteousness of reception – good feedback from group – they are all quite impressed with how reception handles the busy phones and sometimes impolite people

Suggestion - look into getting name tags for staff

Review of text appointment reminder - talk about more information going out to patient regarding the system

Suggestion - look into ways of “texting” through MJOG to home phones to make the system more useful to those who do not have mobiles

Review of Prescriptions question -talked about more advertisement of the fact that the website makes it easier and using the chemist to regularly request your prescriptions

Review of improvement to the waiting room - discussion of risk assessment of water in waiting room

Suggestion–

- Re: water in the waiting room - Rather than having water in the waiting room, puta sign up informing patient that they can ask for water at reception

-Re: toys for children - The practice previously had more toys for children, however they were informed that for health and safety reasons, unless it could be guaranteed that all these toys were sanitised everyday it was a germ hazard and needed to be removed.

-Re: Television – Group members suggested that it annoys some people, but others find it useful. We will look into changing the messages.

-Re: Put up names and pictures of doctors in waiting room – Everyone agreed that this was a good suggestion. The surgery previously had this up in the waiting room, but it has been taken down to update the information and has not yet gone back up.

Review of additional services- mostly happy about the services offered by the surgery. Perhaps more info needed on the services offered at or nearby.

Review of demographic/age of those surveyed and number surveyed -happy with the amount surveyed and the general demographic spread.

STEP 5

Agree an action plan with the PRG including any changes made

At our second group meeting, we discussed methods of increasing interest in the group, expanding membership and reaching members from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds. PPG member suggested moving meetings to a weekday evening instead to try to broaden group members.

We also discussed what the group would like to focus on in future group meetings. They decided that they needed to be more informed about changes going on in the NHS and in Wandsworth surgeries so that they would know what sort of activities they would like to promote.

They therefore decided they would like to have an educational session on the changes within the NHS. They also decided that meeting once a month was too frequent. They would like to meet every 6 weeks.

The next meeting is 19th April at 12:30 and we will provide materials on the changes within the NHS. We are also attempting to invite a speaker to come host a talk on this topic.

As soon as a speaker is confirmed, we will publicise the educational session in the waiting room to try to expand interest in the group.

STEP 6

Publicise the Local Patient Participation Report

By the end of March 2012 we will distribute a copy of this report to our patient participation group members. We will also put both the results of the survey and the PPG report on the practice website and distribute some paper copies in our waiting room for patients who do not have internet access to view. We will also send a copy of the report to the PCT.

We currently have a group that consists of 12members. There are 7 men and 5 women across a range of ethnicities and ages, mainly between 40-70 years of age. Regretfully we have had difficulty engaging younger members of the practice, however we are looking into changing the dates or times of meetings to broaden the scope of interest. Within our current patient group there are patients who have the perspective of having a chronic disease and also a carer.

We recognise that this is not a truly representative patient group mix, but does represent a good mix of regular users of the practice and we are continuing to gather information on ways to make our group as representative of all the various views of our patients as possible.

As a next step we have organised, at the behest of the patient group, an educational session concerning the ongoing changes to the NHS and local health services. We have invited a member of Wandsworth Link, Jeremy Ambache to come and speak to our group on 19th April 2012 at 12:30. He will also be informing our group about the broader patient participation forums within the local area and ways in which they can be involved. We hope this will be informative for the patient group to achieve their goals in understanding these changes and also hope to advertise the educational session to our patients to increase membership and interest in the group.

For information regarding the up-to-date surgery hours and access methods, please see the practice website:

Appendix 1 (poster)

Appendix 2 (invitation letter)

Dr. L.G. Bloch Dr. A. Edwards Dr R Grewal Dr S Patel

MAYFIELD SURGERY

246 Roehampton Lane

London SW15 4AA

Telephone : 020 8780 5770

Fax : 020 8780 5649

22nd November 2011

Dear

As you may be aware we are trying to setup a patient reference group at Mayfield Surgery.

We are writing to people who we have spoken to and may be interested to join a patient participation group. We did try advertising online and in the waiting room but this was not successful. This is part of a national enhanced service which is a government backed scheme for surgeries to be part of.

We are keen to develop a structured group that both reflects and gains the view of our registered patients and enables the practice to obtain feedback from a cross section of the practice population. We would like volunteers and regular meetings. Other local surgeries have patient participation groups –PPGs- in place and have also developed virtual participation groups through which an email community is formed.

We are very keen for the group to represent our practice profile in Roehampton and Putney. This would include a rich and diverse ethnic profile including care groups represented including vulnerable groups like the elderly, children, mental health and learning disability patients. We hope in the new year to also compile a survey with our patient reference group to aid our decisions as to how to improved existing services and proceed with new starting schemes.

We would like to hold our first meeting on 1st February 2012 at 12:30 in the meeting room. Light refreshments will be available.

Please would you fill in the form enclosed and send this or hand this to reception if you can make this meeting. We apologise in advance if you cannot make the initial meeting, but we hope that with negotiation and also input online that we can ensure the fullest participation possible.

This is an exciting time as we feel that by starting a patient participation group we will be able to not just listen to the views of our patients, but also then act upon them too. This will result in a better practice and patient understanding and ultimately better services for our patients here at Mayfield Surgery.

Thank you in advance for you time and we look forward to hearing from you,

Mair Harris ( Practice Manager) and Dr Sachin Patel

Mayfield Surgery

global.mayfield.nhs.net

02087805650

Appendix 3 (patient demographic information /survey demographic information)