Everyone has got a story to tell, and we want to hear it.

St Andrew’s is the UK’s leading charity providing specialist NHS care. We are a unique and influential pioneer in mental health, and have been using Patient Opinion since November 2016.

At St Andrew’s Healthcare, we pride ourselves in being open, honest and direct when it comes to feedback, and have taken a proactive approach by going directly to patients for feedback with astonishing and inspiring results. Each person is individual, so in our view, a blanket approach would not do.  Everyone has got a story to tell, and we want to hear it.

We go directly to our patients to collect stories from them so that they know who we are and that we are not a faceless department who will not act on their feedback.

Giving feedback a physical presence has allowed us to cultivate a successful and effective way of collecting stories. We find that going directly to patients on wards to collect feedback an excellent way to build relationships, and ensure we are approachable and empathetic. Our patients have restricted access to the internet, and respond well to our face to face approach.  It gives us that personal touch.

We make giving feedback fun, and find that patients want to give their opinion, giving us wonderful insight into the running of the service.  We encourage them to participate in games whilst having conversations and, try new things, feedback is given on a one to one basis. We have the option of using the resource pack, or using the leaflets provided by Patient Opinion. I normally collect the stories by writing them down, then uploading them onto the PO site. Some patients write the stories down themselves.

We build a sense of trust, as sometimes, people feel that when giving feedback, it’s not going to be listened to, or they could be identified. Using Patient Opinion allows us to protect the anonymity of people whilst gathering feedback. Currently, I am both collecting and uploading stories, but we are adding more staff day by day so that collecting feedback can grow across the service. We also now have trained 6 patients to help us collect stories from their peers.

As a direct outcome, we have seen a flurry of feedback, and both patients and staff feel listened to.  We print out stories and feedback; I find that printing out responses a good way of showing service users that feedback is read and responded to, as well as inspiring others to give their stories.

Since working with Patient Opinion, we have seen a major change in the willingness of patients to give feedback, and this has also impacted on increasing staff morale. It is easy to get bogged down with the negatives, but since we adopted a proactive way of collecting feedback our staff have relished the outcomes. Many stories we get are from patients simply looking for a way of thanking staff. Even in a negative story patients will often share an aspect of positivity from their care which is refreshing.

Because we have direct feedback on a ward to ward basis, staff can act quickly on feedback if changes need/can be made.

Going forward, we will involve more staff across all our services using a phased roll out of Patient Opinion. Staff are responding amazingly to stories on PO, which is about ensuring they feel supported and understanding that it’s all about listening.

We are excited and inspired by the feedback we have received so far, and look forward to the future, putting patients in the driving seat of our healthcare service.