Patientfriends www.patientfriends.org.uk
"A Local support group that, campaigns for patient rights and improving patient care in the NHS."
More information about Patientfriends.
- What is Patientfriends?
- What need or problem is Patientfriends addressing?
- Who is Patientfriends for?
- How can Patientfriends help you?
- How does Patientfriends operate?
- What are the policies and FAQ of Patientfriends?
- How does Patientfriends campaign to improve healthcare?
- Does People Power make any difference?
- How do you think the NHS could be improved?
- How Patientfriends works
Meetings and local activities in Brighton and Hove area.
Does People Power make any difference?
I believe it does, I also think improving healthcare is not only a worthwhile cause but one that affects each and every one of us. Even those with private health care, because even emergency your healthcare is liable to be from the NHS.
Campaigning about important issue which affects yourselves and those around you, can make you feel very good. It's a great privilege to be able to serve and help others. Also taking action is not being passive; Patientfriends is about standing up for ourselves and for other people.I would encourage anyone to get involved with Patientfriends, or for that matter any other world issue you feel strongly about. None of us are responsible for what other people do, we are only responsible for ourselves.
And if each one of us stand up what we believe in and are concerned about others and our communities, we can make the world and even better placed than it is now.
Patientfriends is about positive support and positive campaigning. Working with doctors and the NHS with problem solving to improve patient care and help the NHS staff get the tools they need to do the job.Patientfriends has absolutely zero tolerance to any rudeness or aggressiveness towards anyone particularly any NHS staff, no grudges no score to settle about possible past poor treatment. But just raising the issues that concern patients in a polite and persistent way.
The opposite of people power, is what I feel goes on at the moment, if you think this is wrong or unfair, please let me know, show me how patient concerns are listened to and acted upon within the NHS, I'm all ears, seriously.
I get the sense that at present if a person receives poor healthcare or is not satisfied with the quality of their healthcare.
Firstly the NHS system does not want to hear about it and patients are not encouraged to give feedback. I believe that concerns raised or complaints made by patients are generally swept under the carpet and largely ignored. I know that's a generalisation. But I'm not talking about one experience, I'm saying this because I don't believe there are any systems or structures in place that allow patient concerns to be heard and taken seriously.
What the NHS has is the PALS service to deal with patient matters and any unhappiness or problems about treatment. My impression is that they do their best and is what is offered is mostly a sort of talking therapy where someone will listen to what you are unhappy about but it is unlikely anything will be done about it because I believe and it has been my experience that PALS has very little power.
And of course you have a situation of a very large organisation investigating problems within its own organisation. I'm happy to see there is a move towards patient satisfaction forms, and listening to patients more.But as things stand right now I believe it's mostly windowdressing. Because it's great to be up to give some feedback or talk to someone about a problem but if nothing is done or acted upon then there is not a lot of point. This is why mean by windowdressing, if the problem is that a lot of patients are experiencing aren't acted upon with the aim of improving things, then it's unlikely that patient care will be improved.