A patient participation group is a selection of patients and practice staff who meet at regular intervals to decide ways of making a positive contribution to the services and facilities offered by the practice to the patients.

What is the purpose of Patient Participation Groups?

• To give practice staff and patients the opportunity to discuss topics of mutual interest in their Practice.
• To provide the means for patients to make positive suggestions about the Practice and their own healthcare.
• To encourage health education activities within the Practice.
• To develop self-help projects to meet the needs of fellow patients.
• To act as a representative group that can be called upon to influence the local provision of Health and Social Care.
• To involve further patients from the wider population.
• Please click here  ToR.doc for our PPG Terms of reference

Further information on PPGs can be found at the National Association for Patient Participation website. 

We would like to know how we can improve our service to you and how you perceive our surgery and staff. 

To help us with this, we are setting up a virtual patient representation group so that you can have your say. We will ask the members of this representative group some questions from time to time, such as what you think about our opening times or the quality of the care or service you received. We will contact you via email and keep our surveys succinct so it shouldn’t take too much of your time.

We aim to gather approximately a hundred patients from as broad a spectrum as possible to get a truly representative sample. We need young people, workers, retirees, people with long term conditions and people from non-British ethnic groups.

If you are happy for us to contact you occasionally by email please click the link opposite to open the sign-up form and complete all the fields.

If you would like to attend our next Patient Participation Group meeting please email our admin team:  ddicb.admin.whittingtonmoor@nhs.net 

Patient Group Minutes 

PPG Notes Feb 2023 PDF.pdf

 PPG Notes Sept 2023.docx

PPG Notes January 2024.pdf

Patient survey results, discussion & actions for consideration

The national patient survey results were very positive this year however the practice wanted to follow up on a few questions with some patients who have attended a F2F appt in past 2 weeks or so (questions we felt we scored less than some other local practices). This showed that  patients are very satisfied with the practice overall but wanted to discuss the below points:

12.5% of patients found the receptionist to be unhelpful with only 50% suggesting they were fairly helpful

37.5% of patients we surveyed said they weren't offered a choice of a GP appointment time and or date

20% of patients said no choice was offered at all for a Practice Nurse appointment

The clinical and Admin team met to discuss the above and suggestions were:

We could consider at opening on-line booking again for some clinicians

Should reception start to ask patients if they have a preferred choice of practice nurse or GP if possible when booking patients in?We could consider texting by AccuRx some Friends & Family questions to many more patients who have consented to sms messaging