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.
"There are long waiting times for appointments."
To help reduce the length of waiting times, the service recruited five dietitians to undertake virtual appointments.
"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.
"Relatives felt that the patient discharge letter did not include all the necessary information."
Changes to the patient record system now allows for more information to be included, from all relevant health professionals.
"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.
"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.
"Missed telephone calls from the service were not returned and as no messages were left the parent was unaware who had rung. Parent was then advised by letter that child had been discharged from the service."
A new process has been put in place which entails the service making two attempts to contact parents, including leaving voice messages and allowing a reasonable time frame for contact to be made with the service, before it is necessary to discharge the child and a re-referral is needed.
"The phone number on the website was incorrect."
The service reviewed service page and made changes to include the correct contact details.
"Carers/relatives of patients would like better communication from ward staff."
The ward re-introduced the 'named nurse' system, so that each patient is allocated a specific staff member for them and their families to liaise with.
"Patient felt the food did not meet their dietary requirements."
To establish any specific food requirements, staff will ensure that allergy and special diet sheets are completed with patients upon admission and passed onto the Head Chef.
"Inpatients said the television sets had poor signal."
The service approached the League of Friends who purchased new televisions, one for each bed.
"An appointment was attended by patient for a coil change only to be informed they would have to wait a further year for it to be replaced."
Due to last minute updates to official clinical timescale guidelines for coil changes, the service contaced as many patients as possible to avoid unnecessary attendance of pre-booked appointments. Going forward, the new guidelines are being incorporated when receiving appointment requests for coil changes.
