A recent survey of people using mental health services in Nottinghamshire has shown an 8% increase in people rating those services as good, very good or excellent. The results this year were 84% compared to 76% in 2007. The survey was carried out with users of the Trust’s adult community mental health services.
The UK Mental Health Survey 2008 was carried out by the Picker Institute on behalf of Nottinghamshire Healthcare as part of a series of annual surveys required by the Healthcare Commission for all NHS mental health trusts in England. The survey enables trusts to monitor their performance against previous UK Mental Health Surveys over the past five years and allows the organisation to understand what service users think of healthcare services provided in the City and County.
A total of 850 service users from our Trust were invited to take part, of which 315 returned a completed questionnaire, giving a response rate of 38.4% of those eligible.
Other areas of satisfaction include people feeling that health professionals, including psychiatrists, Community Psychiatric Nurses listen, treat them with respect and dignity and they have confidence and trust in them. The percentage of people saying they were treated with dignity and respect was between 82% and 91% for the various professions. The ratings in most categories have improved over the last 5 years.
There has also been a significant increase in people saying they can always contact their care co-ordinator if they have a problem, from 70% to 77%.
Some areas are still viewed as needing improvement. Medication is one of these, with people wanting more of a say in what they are prescribed and more information about side effects. There are also some concerns about written copies of care plans being shared with people and having a say in decisions about their care plans. Access to crisis care is another area where patient satisfaction could be improved.
Mike Cooke is Chief Executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare:
“It’s good to see more people rating our services as excellent or good and I would like to thank and praise our staff for the great work they are doing -but we are aware of some areas we need to address. In the case of medication we have a Medications Group that has piloted checklists in three areas for staff and service users about medications. We are looking to roll this out and will evaluate its impact. There is always room for improvement and we take these findings seriously. We will be looking at the areas of lower satisfaction and working out how we can help our staff address them and make our services more responsive to the needs of our service uses. That’s the way we will continue to improve.”
