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At Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust we welcome all feedback relating to concerns, whether it be via a complaint, a comment made on a survey or brought to our attention in another way. Feedback from our patients, their families, carers or friends helps us to make improvements to the services we provide.
Here are some examples of what you said and what we did to make improvements:
"There are very long waiting times from referral, for children to be seen by the service."
Changes have been made to the therapy offered, with a focus on fewer sessions offered at a time and aimed at upskilling families to support their children’s communication development at home. This will enable the service to identify those children who will benefit from more intensive direct therapy and in turn be seen more quickly.
"Some patients do not own scales and need to regularly provide their body weight to the service."
The service is providing information on where people can access weighing scales in public places. (Community Dietetics)
"Parents would like face-to-face appointments for their children."
The service is gradually opening up face to face availability and will be offering these appointments where needed.
"It would be helpful to provide group webinar education sessions in the afternoon, to accommodate patients who find the mornings difficult due to their level of pain."
The service reviewed the times of the webinars and now offer patients the choice to attend a morning or afternoon session.
"Patients and their family members felt they could be involved more in decisions about care and treatment."
To raise awareness of the importance of involving patients and their relatives, staff undertook relevant training.
"It would be useful to receive a map showing the appointment venue location."
Maps can be sent via email, with the patient's consent, in addition to paper copies being available.
"Some confirmation letters were not arriving prior to the patient's appointment and this meant they did not have all the information they needed."
The service has introduced a 'contact us' appointment booking system. This entails patients contacting the service to book an appointment and is followed-up with confirmation by email.
"The process of collecting hard copy prescriptions is inconvenient."
The service introduced electronic prescribing.
"It is a very long wait for the next appointment, following the initial consultation within a prison setting."
Extra sessions were provided, to help reduce the waiting times for patients to be seen.
"A parent attending a workshop felt questions about female genital mutilation (FGM) were inappropriate for that particular session."
For future workshops, the service added a framed question about FGM and produced guidance for staff to assist with parental questioning.
"There was a misunderstanding about the reception-aged programmes being opt-out rather than consent being required."
In preparation for next year, the service amended the parent/carer letter, to include clear explanation that the programmes are opt-out and details on how to do so if required.
"The process and content of group webinars for parents could be improved."
Changes made:
Parents are now given an option at triage to proceed straight to webinar without an initial assessment.
Prior to webinar, assessment has been amended to check understanding of webinar and foundations of sleep.
Content of webinars re-written as the foundations to frame healthy sleep.
Clear options are provided on webinar and by staff on how to access more support.
Taking questions from parents during a webinar is being trialled.
The pack provided following a webinar has been renewed; a copy of webinar and clear discharge letter with links and instructions on how to access more support.
"The health visitors were not always able to provide tongue-tie scores to parents."
The infant feeding team are documenting the scores on a part of the patient record system that is easily accessible for health visitors. A new page has been created for the Red book, for staff to insert with the assessment, giving mothers a record of their consultation.
"It can be difficult having an assessment undertaken over the telephone."
To improve the quality of assessments, the service works to increase online appointments. The admin team offer online appointments where appropriate, so patients can choose the method of contact they prefer.
"It is not easy to get through to the service, as the telephone appointment booking line is always busy or has a very long waiting queue."
The service adopted a new telephone system with improved functions to better manage waiting queues. To further help the busy phone lines, a two-way texting function is being piloted, for patients to use for cancelling appointments.
"The appointment was booked with a clinician who was not working on the day."
The service established the appointment was booked to see a clinician that has the same first name as another. To avoid this reoccurring, admin staff reference a planner and stream information to determine which clinician is covering a specific clinic.
"It can be upsetting for some young females to be asked by the nurse if they are pregnant, prior to receiving a vaccine."
In preparation for this academic year, the service added wording to the automated email response sent to parents/guardians upon submission of their consent form. This states that nurses are required to ask secondary school children if there is a possibility of pregnancy, before administering a vaccine. The email also contains a link to the Green Book (details of latest information on vaccines and procedures), where further information can be found on why nurses need to ask this question.
"It’s not clear that there are two sections in the centre, one for the UTC and the one for the GP service. (Gravesham)."
The UTC lead worked with the landlord of the building to review the current signage within the hospital. New, clearer signage is now in place.