We aim to provide the highest possible service to our patients and relatives. We welcome any comments and views you may have. If you do have any comments or views please feel free to fill in a PALS (Patient, Advice and Liaison Service) leaflet which can be found on our Reception desks.

Patient Surveys

Our trust recently launched a computerised patient survey. On this survey are 5 questions asking how you found your experience at the West Suffolk Hospital. This is our way of finding out what you think of our Department and how we can improve our service.

After your visit you may be approached by one of our friendly Volunteers. They will have a hand held tablet with 7 questions and each question has 4 answers. This questionnaire is optional and will only take a couple of minutes of your time. They will talk you through the questions and why we are collecting this information. This is computerised and the results will be sent to the transmitter. We then receive these results on a monthly basis. The results can be found under the statistical information.

How you have helped us.

We recently launched a questionnaire asking you how we could improve the service and Outpatients environment. Through this questionnaire we identified a big issue with our facilities provided for children.

After discussing how we can improve we came up with several ideas and with help from the Friends of West Suffolk we have been able to make our Department better for children. You will see posters along the walls advertising Bizzi Bags. The Bizzi Bags are fun bags for children which come in 4 different varieties. There is a Pet bag, a farm bag, a zoo bag and a sea bag. These Bizzi bags contain items such as crayons, stickers, colouring in, dot to dot, stencils which the child can do whilst waiting for their appointment. These are available to any child over the age of 3 and can be found behind the reception desks. Please ask the receptionist for a free Bizzi Bag. 

The ENT waiting area has been refurbished to make the area feel more relaxing for the children. On the walls of the waiting area you will see a mural of “fantasy land” and “sea land” which was done by one of the Audiology team and a volunteer. You will also find a set of questions such as how many fish can they see which the children can try to answer whilst waiting for their appointment.

We ran a project called “in their shoes”. This is where we asked members of public and members of staff to come together and have an informal chat about their experiences of the Hospital. They were paired off so we could identify ways of improving the service for both the patients and the Hospital. 

One of the issues that came up for Outpatients was privacy and dignity. Through this project we identified we needed to make improvements to the rooms in Outpatients and we have undergone refurbishments to improve the rooms.

The department has a patient pager scheme, paid for by the Hospital charity ball. One of our more frequent complaints has been delays in clinic. If a clinic is running late we can now offer our patients a pager which allows you to leave the department and visit our canteen or have a walk around the Hospital rather than having to wait in the waiting area. When the clinic is ready for you we simply key in the pager number which will then make the pager vibrate and flash. You can then return to the department take a seat in the waiting area and wait for the nurse to call you into the Consulting room.

Picture – one of our Receptionists handing out a patient pager