Our practice manager may be on annual leave this week, but that doesn’t stop her from looking at the results from the Patient Satisfaction Survey and the Friends and Family Test.
Here are the comments received during the last week.
provides a better service than a lot of other surgeries.
Do you think the practice has improved in the last 12 months?
about the same
What are we doing particularly well?
communication is better
What do you feel we can improve on and how?
would like a better and quicker access to the doctor.
We believe access to the doctor has improved with the current process. Every patient requesting a GP appointment receives an assessment of needs after the receptionist has taken details. A clinician then reads through these details and assesses which course of action is most appropriate. Where a GP appointment is felt to be the appropriate action, an appointment is offered. Often on the same day. Where a same-day appointment is felt to be needed but no appointments remain, the clinician will signpost to an appropriate service that can provide a same-day appointment.
Based on my appointment on 5th sept 23 everything went straight forward.
I would have given a different answer based on previous attempts to get an appointment in the past and have had no alternative but to use the I heart service as could never get through to the surgery & when successful no appointments left.
Do you think the practice has improved in the last 12 months?
Yes it seems that way if my last appointment is anything to go by
What are we doing particularly well?
It was easy enough to arrange an appointment via the triage/link
What do you feel we can improve on and how?
I’m lucky enough to rarely need to visit the GP but based on my last appointment I can’t fault it.
Great service from staff
It appears the above patient agrees access to an appointment has improved. We hope this is the case and less people in need of an appointment miss out. Where a different service is more appropriate, patients should now be signposted to that more appropriate service.
Reception staff very friendly,they are so busy don’t know how they do it. Dr Sam as always very professional and friendly, she certainly takes an interest in her patients.
Another satisfied customer. It certainly helps to receive positive feedback too.
Appointments and telephone working much better
My appointment was for 3.50pm, I arrived at 3.35pm booked in at reception. Did see doctor until 4.25pm. There were other patients that arrived way after me who saw the same doctor, the receptionist had forgot to mark me on computer. It was only when another receptionist took over, she noticed a question mark next to my name, therefore she booked me in. I suffer with anxiety and depression so this waiting about made me very anxious and fidgity.
We are very sorry to hear this. Although sometimes the patient forgets to inform reception, it also occurs that our receptionist has forgotten to mark a patient as arrived. This is usually when she has been very busy and the patient arrived while she was in the middle of another task. We apologise if this ever happened to you. If you wonder if the receptionist might not have marked you off, please don’t hesitate to doublecheck. Often it is because a doctor is running behind after having dealt with an important problem or an emergency, but receptionists are only human, too.
There is definitely improvement In making an appointment, still room for improvement on patient care as most people using the service are ill, sometimes when reception are explaining what can or can’t be done it is done in a manner of, that’s your lot not in a caring manner, I know it is frustrating for staff when there is a lack of resources, but it is more frustrating for someone who is ill
We apologise if staff come across as non-caring and we can assure you they do care. Unfortunately, often there is nothing that is within their power to do. If they have come across this a few times in a row, then it might start to sound a little despairing. They would love to help but know their hands are bound. Perhaps it is time to discuss this issue with our staff again in one of our upcoming training sessions. How can they manage their own frustrations and ensure the patient feels listened to?
My experience with the practice was 100% perfect as always but when I was in my appointment with Jackie I realy felt like I wasn’t wanted there I was asked questions which I answered but then I was told I don’t mean that answer a mean what she wanted me to say why ask me a question when ur going to answer it in future I would prefer to see a doctor not a nurse if possible I realy felt like a peice of crap when I walk out of doctors for no reason I’m sorry to moan but I can’t stop thinking about how I was made to feel
We wonder what happened here. Most patients are 100% happy with how they feel listened to and supported by our advanced nurse practitioner. She is a very competent and thorough individual with many years of experience and works at the same level as a GP. We can only guess that the question she asked and the question the patient thought she asked were different questions and she wanted to clarify this. However, we weren’t there and don’t know what happened. We only know she would be horrified to hear she upset a patient.
Can’t remember the last time I used the doctors surgery but I have to firstly say how helpful & professional Julie on reception was. Not just with myself but with others visiting the reception desk. Secondly I would like to say how lucky we are to have Dr Bell at our practice. He gave me time to explain my circumstances, listened to me & responded with understanding and care & empathy.
It was nice to be able to get straight through on the telephone & as in the past I have given up. it was straight forward to get an appointment as needed.
Thank you
Another satisfied customer.
I was contacted by the surgery that my medical and asthma review was needed. The attention and care I received was excellent. The nurse wanted me to see a Dr and I received an appointment by telephone the same day. Luckily I don’t need Drs appointments often but when I do Dr Maters is always very courteous and
thorough, throughout the appointment
Glad to hear the system worked well.
Thanks again for a much needed appointment
By making the message on your answer phone shorter if possible
We will be looking at the message again in the near future. It is difficult to make it shorter and still provide all the information needed.
On this occasion I had an appointment arranged quickly with a practice GP and the doctor who reviewed my condition was very good and displayed a full understanding
Thank you for your service Dr Lannon was excellent
We also received a few spam messages. How to grow our Instagram. How to improve something we don’t offer, etc. We obviously deleted those straight away.
You can’t book an appointment with GPs.
You can only book appointment by telephone on that day…start ringing in morning and it’s very difficult to get the reception team, the phone is continously on engaged tone then get disconnected.
If you luckily get through, All appointment slots have gone?
This patient doesn’t appear to realise our system has changed. Receptionists no longer directly book GP appointments. Instead, they take details of the problem. A clinician reads through the details given and assesses what action will best fit the patient’s problem. This could be an appointment, advice, prescription, signposted to another service better suited for that problem. And yes, when all appointments have already been assigned and our capacity is reached, the patient will be signposted to i-Heart or another service. Our phone lines are extremely busy, and this is something we have little or no control over. The alternative is to use our online consultations platform and bypass the phones altogether. You can find this here: https://florey.accurx.com/p/C85018
I asked for a blood test for my liver due to poor results on the past. It was arranged really quick and I get it done in the morning, se day I first contacted the practice.
I’ve now seen 3 different doctor one being at at A&E only to be told I should go back to my own doctor to review my medication so very frustrated and feel I’ve been given a runaround
We’re sorry to hear that. We don’t know the exact problem, but hope this is resolved now.
Dr Jackie and nurse Gemma have been nothing short of fantastic with me, ive honestly really appreciated their time and effort to help me
We agree that our Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Jackie and our nursing associate Gemma are great assets in the practice and are glad to hear this patient felt supported by them.
The clinician I saw was extremely approachable and friendly. Making myself and my daughter who was a vivid baby and usually scared of doctors/nurses in the Gp setting very relaxed. My daughter who is 4 now actually left the room and said that lady was very kind.
Text with appt time was confusing as it said I had a face to face appointment when it was a telephone appointment. I had to ring the surgery to check which was correct.
We apologise. That was really strange and shouldn’t have happened. Only face-to-face appointments should receive a text reminder. All we can think is that an appointment slot was used that generally is a face-to-face and not changed to a telephone slot.
Again, the majority of the feedback was positive, but there were some displeased customers too. This certainly gives us food for thought and the opportunity to look at ways to improve our services further. Thank you all for taking the time to fill in the Patient Satisfaction Survey and Friend and Family Test. It allows us to see where the problems are through the eyes of our patients and work towards finding solutions for this.
