Crown Street Surgery Patient Group Meeting held on Tuesday 21 st February 2012
Present: Lynne Takacs, Lee Baskerville, Lyndon Hall, Geoff Lord, Rachel Flinders,
Barbara Wroe, Amanda Chapman, Carol Lupton, Dr. H. Jarvis, Father Christopher
Bailey.
Apologies: Paul Adey
Guest Speaker: Helen Wyatt (Rotherham PCT PALS & Patient Engagement Manager)
LT explained that Helen Wyatt had been invited to the meeting as a participant in the main agenda item – namely the patient survey. Her role within the PCT was to assist service users in formulating surveys, educate on dos and don’ts and organise the provision of hardware to support survey operation. She circulated some worked examples of surveys (including a poorly designed example) for the committee to look at.
A brief summary of HW’s presentation to the meeting is as follows:
Survey’s should be concise, not contain too many questions, aimed at what can be acted upon from the answers, not too long, set realistic questions, questions should be in the correct format, not attempt to glean information already obtained by other means, questions should be unambiguous, ideally contain a maximum of 12 questions.
A discussion was then held amongst the group as to what the pertinent issues were for
Crown Street that any surveys we set to be focused on. Did not attends, appointments and online prescriptions were identified along with surgery hours, satisfaction of service offered by surgery staff, alternatives to the current repeat prescription system and telephone triage service.
Discussion also held on how to word and present any findings
Dr Jarvis had previously highlighted the use of surveys for individual GP’s appraisals but was happy for this to be covered in more detail in subsequent surveys.
HW stated that a desktop and hand held tablet touch screen computers could be made available straight away once final survey decided upon.
GL said that it was imperative that the survey should contain an age group question as standard.
LT also pointed out how surveys could be used to identify relevant guest speakers that could be invited to future meetings dependent on outcomes of any surveys utilised at
Crown Street.
A couple of inclusions suggested for the first survey was to assess the support or otherwise of service users to automated reminders for appointments (like hospital appts) and text message reminders (LT raised the issue that on this matter that sufficient safeguards are still not able to be put in place at this stage).
HW then explained how any information collated is transferred into analysis both in general terms and on specific issues.

CL queried whether tablets could be made available for use outside of the surgery.
GL in conjunction with Dr Jarvis then went through one of the worked examples supplied by HW and amended to suit Crown Street’s needs and to formulate a draft survey for use by the surgery.
Once final draft was agreed by all committee members it was passed to HW and staff at the PCT were to draw it up and supply back to the surgery together with the hardware.
LT stated that it was hoped to have at least 100 responses before the end of the current year (i.e. 31 st March 2012)
The committee thanked Helen Wyatt for her attendance and help with the whole issues of surveys.
Matters Arising & Any Other Business:
- LT explained how patients themselves now write their own appointment time down on cards the theory being they are more likely to remember their appointment and reduce the numbers of DNA’s
- Swinton School update – LH explained that the school were still keen for students to get involved with a newsletter for the group and that
OFSTED had identified that community involvement was an area that the school should work on and the committee was an ideal opportunity for the school to address this.
- LT stated that feedback from the PCT on online prescriptions was still to be received.
- The issue of whether committee members would need to undertake
CRB checks to continue to sit on committee. LT thought not but would check to make sure.
- There was a reminder that all committee members were to supply a pen paragraph for future use on newsletter and possible surgery website.
LH, RF and PA had already done theirs.
- CL asked whether committee members should use ID badges
- The previous indifferent response LT had received form Market St surgery’s patient committee had seemingly changed and they are now happy to discuss issues with us. LT to supply someone on the committee with a contact number for Market St to follow this up.
- The next meeting should concentrate on survey progress and response analysis and will be held on Tuesday 20 th March starting at 5:15pm