Patient experience

We greatly value the feedback of patients and carers about our services – understanding people’s experiences helps us to better meet their needs and improve the care we provide. 

We use it to celebrate what we’re doing well, share learning, take on useful ideas and make improvements where people think we could do better. 

There are several different ways you can share your experiences of our services, whether it relates to care provided at home, at an outpatient appointment or during a stay at one of our inpatient units. 

Compliments and suggestions  

If you would like to recognise and thank staff who provided your care, please complete our compliments and suggestions form. 

Patient/family member/carer experience surveys   

We often ask patients/service users, family members and carers to tell us more about their experiences of our services by answering a few questions. This feedback will not only help us to understand what we are doing well and what we could do better but also enable us to make positive changes based on people’s suggestions.   

The surveys are service-specific and include the three standard NHS Friends and Family Test questions which feature in all NHS feedback surveys. The surveys also include specific questions for carers to complete, which are linked to the Triangle of Care programme (link). Demographic and protected characteristic questions (about factors such as your age, race and sex) are included to help us identify health inequalities around Dorset, though these are optional.    

We use a company called Gather to offer surveys via paper forms, email, text messaging, QR Codes, website links and tablets. All patient/family member/carer feedback is anonymous and cannot be linked to your medical records.    

Read more about how we meet NHS security and data management standards. 

Patient stories  

We showcase patient and carer stories at all our Trust Board meetings, where people discuss their experiences of our services. These stories aim to: 

• provide a focus on patient and carer experience to help inform our decision making 

• improve knowledge of patient and carer experience, needs and expectations 

• show that we are learning from patient/carer stories in order to improve/develop our services. 

Click below to watch some of our patient stories from recent years. You can find more of such videos on our YouTube channel.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding patient/family member/carer experience, please contact the patient experience team on dhc.patient.experience@nhs.net. 

To make a complaint or raise a concern, please visit our PALS page.