We encourage you to be involved in your own healthcare and the services we provide. Together we can help each other.
We ask that you question and share your feedback with us. This will help us both to better understand access, health conditions and treatment options. Which in turn, is known to improve health and wellbeing outcomes as well as greater satisfaction from your experience.
We post news on our website, YouTube channel and Facebook page. We also send occasional text messages about local campaigns or urgent updates, e.g. site closures.
We host live Q&A events, usually at 5:30pm on a Monday evening, to share and discuss news about the Practice or wider NHS. It’s also an opportunity for you to ask us any question live.
We are committed to involving you in Avon Valley Practice as far as possible in the work that we are doing. We strive to be as open and transparent in all that we do.
Other Ways to Provide Feedback
- Friends & Family Test – available via your mobile phone and online following an appointment. It only takes a few seconds to complete and we really do appreciate you taking the time to record your feedback.
- Annual Patient Survey – this is part of a national programme which, once complete, you can view our score to every question asked.
- Talking to a Practice team member.
However feedback is received, it helps shape our plans for the future.
Regular Communications
- Keeping You in The Picture – our quarterly live Q&A in which we aim to provide information that’s of interest to the many different groups within our Practice membership.
- Waiting Room Media Screens – this is updated every month and is an excellent way to keep patients informed about important information.
Then there are things like:
- Texts and emails – that go out to patients who have signed up to this service. These brief, instant messages are an invaluable way for us to keep you informed and help save everyone time.
- Letters – some of which are sent Practice wide, whilst others are relevant to particular groups of patients and their carers. Either way, the emphasis is always about keeping everyone informed in a clear, concise and timely manner.
- Hearing loops – available at reception – every little helps when it’s not so easy to hear.
- Posters and leaflets – in the waiting rooms and corridors, covering a range of health and wellbeing topics.
- Bookcase – funds raised from the sale of donated books go towards buying new equipment for the Practice that directly benefits patients. Not only that, we hope patients enjoy coming to browse through what’s new.
- Last but not least, a warm welcome with a smile – we appreciate just how important this can be and love it when you smile back!
All of the above adds up to a lot of communication that’s going back and forth between us all every day. Even our appointments schedule is the result of feedback and communication. For example, you told us how important it is to have more flexible appointments for matters that are urgent and require on-the-day care. We responded by offering walk in services every morning and expanding our clinical team that now includes 3 clinicians.
Whichever way you look at it, it’s all about communication. We hope you’ve found this information useful and it’s by participating that we can all get the most from this process.
Let’s keep the conversation going, over to you…