There has been a big focus placed on feedback within healthcare recently with the introduction of the Friends and Family test for Secondary Care and more recently, primary care.
The test focusses on whether patients would recommend the service they have used to friends and family, should they need similar treatment. Some areas of healthcare have had compulsory FFT delayed due to the complex nature of the patients’ interaction with the service, these include offender health and mental health.
Determined to prove that offenders would use the opportunity to give valid, worthwhile feedback, the team from Shropshire and Staffordshire decided to embark on a pilot. Working with leading feedback provider We Love Surveys (www.welovesurveys.co.uk), the team modified the FFT question to suit the audience, using terminology that was appropriate in that setting.
The question used was: ‘Based on your experience today, how likely are you to recommend this service to a fellow inmate?’
Health & Justice Project lead Deborah said: “It was important for us to try this method and see whether the inmates would be happy to give honest feedback. In all healthcare settings it is important to understand whether we are delivering the best level of service and to identify areas where we could improve as well as celebrating when things go well.”
The pilot was carried out for a month and was controlled by the Healthcare team at HM Prison Brinsford. In the four weeks the pilot was running, 26 inmates gave their feedback, with 65% of inmates saying that they would recommend the service.
Deborah said: “The number of responses was a real surprise to us. We didn’t think we would engage that many inmates, and it was even better to see that the majority of them used the opportunity well and gave constructive, valuable insight to us.”
“This is definitely something we would consider doing again in the future, and We Love Surveys were the perfect partner with a great solution that fitted our needs with a friendly, helpful approach. I would not hesitate to recommend them to other colleagues.”
Helen Dargie, Director at We Love Surveys, said: “It was great to work with the team on this pilot, as it’s an area of healthcare that rarely uses feedback, especially a regular survey like FFT. We are pleased that the solution worked well and hope to work with the team on similar projects in the future.”
