Patient Experience and Involvement
What is patient experience?
Patient Experience is how a patient (or their relative /carer) perceives the care they receive. This includes:
- What a patient experiences, for example, how a member of staff communicates with them or getting timely access to appointments.
- How that made them feel; Did they feel treated with dignity and respect? Did they feel they were spoken to in a sensitive way? Did they feel like they were listened to?
Our aim is to ensure that patient experience at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust is excellent for everyone, whether that be as a patient, carer, care partner or member of the public.
The experience you receive is important to the Trust, and we consider patient experience to be central to all we do as we strive to provide safe, high-quality care across all the services we provide.
We welcome your support in providing feedback as this helps the Trust to continually improve patient experience. Your feedback supports the Trust to understand where we are getting the service right and where we can make improvements. Your suggestions for where and how improvements can be made are important to us and helps the Trust to ensure patients and what is important to them remains at the centre of all we do.
How do we collect feedback?
At Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, we routinely collect feedback in several ways from patients, relatives and carers which provides us with valuable information to assess the quality of our services and identify things that require improvement. These include:
- The NHS Friends and Family Test
- National Patient Experience Surveys
- Local patient experience surveys
- Compliments, complaints, and concerns
- Engagement and involvement with patients, families and carers who have recent lived experience of our services.
Feedback is also picked up through other means such as:
- Thank you cards
- Healthwatch reports
All the feedback the Trust receives is reviewed and the Patient Experience and Involvement Group which is led by the Chief Nurse Lindsay Rudge. Listening continually to the people and communities we care for, supports the Trust to identify priorities for improvement.
National Patient Surveys
We receive feedback from a programme of National Patient Surveys. You can see the results from the latest surveys through the National Patient Survey Links:
Adult inpatient Survey 2023, published August 2024
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust - Care Quality Commission
Urgent and Emergency Care Survey 2022 published August 2023
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHjS Foundation Trust - Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk)
Maternity Survey 2022 Published January 2023
Maternity Survey (nhssurveys.org)
Children and young people’s survey 2020 published December 2021
Children and young people's survey (nhssurveys.org)
Whilst the surveys provide the Trust with helpful feedback, it can take a long time between the feedback being given and the results being received at the Trust.
The National Friends and Family Test
The Friends and Family test is a national feedback tool that offers patients the opportunity to provide feedback on the care and treatment they received. We use the Friends and Family Test to collect feedback in the following services:
- Inpatient wards
- Childrens services
- Maternity
- Community
- Emergency Departments
- Outpatients
It involves answering just one question: How likely are you to recommend our services to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?
Answers range from extremely likely to extremely unlikely and it also gives the opportunity to provide comments about what went well and what can be improved.
The results are shared monthly with our Trust colleagues and nationally.
You can complete the Friends and Family Test online here:
Patient experience and what we do with your feedback - CHFT (cht.nhs.uk)
How do I provide feedback to the Trust?
To receive your feedback and support the Trust to act upon it in a timely manner, you can speak with a member of the team providing your care, or we have a number of additional ways in which you can share your feedback.
Our Patient Advice and Liaison Service are here to listen and respond to your experiences and help us improve your care and our services in the future.
You might want to contact us if you want more information or advice about your care, or you wish to pay a compliment or give general views about your care, or you may wish to make us aware of your concerns or make a complaint.
We value your opinions and recognise the importance of your experiences. We appreciate that sometimes we make mistakes. Your feedback to us is very valuable and will help us to improve our services.
You can contact PALS on 01484 343800 or email patientadvice@cht.nhs.uk
Further information can be found by clicking this link: Patient Advice and Complaints Service - CHFT (cht.nhs.uk)
Care Opinion is a national independent feedback platform for health services. The Trust can hear your feedback on this site, whether as a patient, visitor, relative or carer. You can access this website via this link Care Opinion
Can you be the voice for patients and service users across Calderdale and Huddersfield? A message from our Chief Nurse, Lindsay Rudge
Experts by Experience and Patient Safety Partners
We are seeking volunteers to join our Trust to strengthen how we can hear and use your feedback. These volunteers will be known as Experts by Experience, as we recognise how important working in partnership with patients, carers and members of the public is, to helping us make changes which improve the care everyone receives from us.
As a volunteer Expert by Experience, you will be supported to play a vital role in helping us understand how it feels to access our services, or to care for someone who does, and to ensure that the voice of patients, carers or service users is represented and heard at the Trust.
We also have volunteers who work with our patient safety team, known as Patient Safety Partners. Their focus is particularly on activities which improve patient safety.
To learn more about the difference you can make within the role of an Expert by Experience or Patient Safety Partner please see more below, including a message from our Chief Nurse, Lindsay Rudge about the roles.
You can also contact the Patient Experience Team via email: PatientExperience@cht.nhs.uk for more information.
More information on Experts by Experience
Be the voice for patients and service users across Calderdale and Huddersfield.
What is an Expert by Experience?
People sharing their experience and knowledge with us here at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) are often called Experts by Experience. As a volunteer Expert by Experience, you will be supported to play a vital role in helping us understand how it feels to access our services, or to care for someone who does, and to ensure that the voice of patients, carers or service users is represented and heard.
As a volunteer, out of pocket expenses will be paid in line with Trust policies.
Do I need any experience?
You may have experience as a patient, carer, care partner or member of the public. We ask that your knowledge and experience of using the services at the Trust is within the last five years. It is essential that you can put forward the views of all our patients across our communities, and not only your own opinion.
What is expected?
Experts by Experience can volunteer to become involved in various tasks and programmes of work, and for a flexible number of hours. There will be opportunities to work with us at one of our sites, as well as remotely by Microsoft Teams or, for example, by reviewing information and sharing their thoughts.
Some ways in which Experts by Experience can support the Trust include:
- Working within specific groups and committees to ensure the voice of the patient/carer is heard
- Sharing their lived experience to support learning and development
- Supporting the staff recruitment process
- Helping to design patient pathways or services
- Getting involved in quality issues and improving standards
What can we offer you?
- Training and induction to help you to fulfil your role
- Provide a mentor/buddy who will support you and a named contact at the Trust for any queries or support
- An opportunity to develop new skills
- An opportunity to help improve the experience and quality of care provided at CHFT
For further information please contact: patientexperience@cht.nhs.uk or our Matron for Patient Experience on 07825 054 782.
You can also register your interest using this form https://forms.office.com/e/rJPzLhnQ0B and a member of the team will be in touch.
More information on Patient Safety Partners
Be the voice for patients, carers or care partners across Calderdale and Huddersfield.
What is a Patient Safety Partner?
A Patient Safety Partner (PSP) supports activities to improve patient safety at Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust (CHFT). PSPs represent the voice of the patient, ensuring they are at the heart of everything we do, by challenging us when things go wrong and helping us to make improvements.
PSPs can be patients, carers or care partners. All we ask is that your experience of using our services or being a loved one or a carer for a patient, is within the last five years.
This is a voluntary role, but out of pocket travel expenses will be reimbursed.
Do I need any experience?
Other than having recent experience of using our services as either a patient, carer, or a care partner, no experience in this role is necessary. We do ask that you have a genuine desire to support patient safety and improvement at CHFT. We are especially keen to include people who have an awareness of the experiences and perspectives of our communities. For example, people who have difficulty accessing health services due to disability, financial difficulties, or health conditions.
What is expected of PSPs?
- Attending meetings and committees relating to patient safety, challenging our thinking in a constructive and positive way
- Involvement in patient safety training for our staff
- Speaking to patients, their carers and families to ensure the patient voice is heard
- Engaging with the wider community and/or groups of patients
- Participating in investigation oversight groups
- Involvement in patient safety improvement projects
- Commit to approximately 8-10 hours a month. We aim to be as flexible as possible
What can we offer you?
- Provide training and induction to enable you to fulfil your role
- Provide a mentor/buddy who will support you and have regular meetings with you
- Offer regular peer support meetings
For further information contact Sharon Cundy, Head of Quality and Patient Safety on 07285 460 078. Or email patientexperience@cht.nhs.uk
You can also register your interest through this form https://forms.office.com/e/rJPzLhnQ0B and one of the team will be in touch.
Improvement Activities
Improvement Activities
Through your feedback made many improvements across the Trust, whether that be providing bigger cups for people to enjoy a drink from, to offering weekend blood tests within Halifax town centre.
Many other activities are underway with one example being recruiting Experts by Experience to improve communication, particularly within the electronic patient record and patient portal.
The Trust is supporting staff to be trained to record patient stories, as these have been found to be a very effective way of hearing from patients and carers of their experience and using this for improvement.
We work in partnership with other organisations to make improvements such as Healthwatch, the Local Authority and Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Organisations. Working together helps the Trust to support patients, carers and members of the public as we recognise that your experience can be shaped by the care and support you receive from a number of organisations.
