16th October 2023
The Southern Health and Social Care Trust has been working with service users to improve how they receive feedback from patients who use stroke services.
Trust stroke staff, service users and Care Opinion Team have teamed up with the Stroke Association, to develop a new service user feedback survey for patients being discharged from Craigavon, Daisy Hill, Lurgan and South Tyrone hospitals and the community stroke service.
Around 600 patients are admitted to Southern Trust hospitals each year with stroke which is a serious life-threatening medical emergency that happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off.
Launching the new project James Gilpin, Stroke Service Improvement Lead for the Southern Trust explains: “We have a highly skilled and experienced team of medical, nursing, diagnostics and allied health professional staff, supporting diagnosis, acute treatment and rehabilitation of stroke patients across hospital and community services.
“They are absolutely committed to continually improving their services and in recent months have introduced a number of innovative developments including the latest artificial intelligence diagnostics technology, as well as a new ambulatory and virtual ward.
“Those who use our services are best placed to tell us what is working well and how we may be able to improve. We really encourage and would greatly appreciate if all patients or carers will please complete the feedback when asked by staff, to share their views and help us to improve the outcomes and experiences of future service users.”
Patients will be asked to complete a Care Opinion form to share some general feedback and then answer 10 short questions, giving more detail on particular parts of the service. They can either answer the questionnaire with staff or if they prefer to use a QR/barcode, they can complete it in their own time.
Always phone 999 with suspected stroke symptoms.
FAST: Face, Arm, Speech, and Time to call 999.
Face – Has their face fallen on one side? Can they smile?
Arms – Can they raise both arms and keep them there?
Speech – Is their speech slurred?
Time – Time to call 999 if you see any single one of these signs
Share your experience of Health or Social on the Care Opinion website https://www.careopinion.org.uk/