Growing Patient Participation

Campaign Update: Issue 4

Welcome to the Christmas issue of the Growing Patient Participation Campaign Update. This issue includes an update on the Making a Difference fund; includes details of the Department of Health’s Get Involved campaign; re-caps on last month’s Royal College of General Practitioners Annual National Primary Care Conference in Glasgow, and features the regular ‘PPG tips’ and ‘PPG Focus’.

If you have any suggestions for forthcoming issues, feedback on articles featured in this Update, or would just like to share details of your own PPG’s activities please email us at campaign@growingppgs.com.

Making a Difference – another opportunity to bid!

Thanks to all of you who submitted applications last month to bid for a share of the Making a Difference fund, aimed at helping get new PPG initiatives off the ground, or to provide support for existing ones. We had an overwhelming response, and received over 100 entries, with bids ranging from hundreds to thousands of pounds. 

The quality of the entries made judging tough, but we have selected a handful of successful applicants, who will be informed over the next few days. Initiatives were wide ranging, with bids being made to fund support services for vulnerable patients, health promotion events, new ways of communicating with patients and research into out of hours service provision, to name but a few!

Those not shortlisted this time around will be automatically entered into the second round of judging, the closing date for which is 12th January 2010.  

For more information and to download an application form, click here

Get Involved

A new website page has been created by the Department of Health, to showcase the many ways for people to get actively involved in their healthcare.

The new page, available at www.nhs.uk/getinvolved, showcases Patient Participation Groups, alongside details of other ways to get involved, such as Local Involvement Networks or Patient Advice and Liaison Services.

The new page has been launched following the publication of the NHS Constitution at the beginning of the year. As many of you will know, the Constitution sets out the rights of patients in relation to their NHS care, making it clear what everyone should expect from the NHS, and how people can play a part in making it even better.

PPG Focus

For this PPG Focus, Ros Carpenter, liaison officer and founding member of the Coppice Surgery and Angmering Medical Centre PPG in, explains how helping facilitate the annual flu jab clinic is one of the group’s most notable achievements to date.

As one of the PPG’s prime aims is to help improve the running of the practice, the annual winter flu jab clinic is always a key time of year to help ensure good service for the most vulnerable patients.

Ros explains that members of the PPG are usually on site for the duration of the clinic to help make patients’ lives easier by ensuring all goes as smoothly and efficiently. Ros says that the presence of fellow patients, serving tea and coffee, eases the nerves of some of the more elderly patients, making the whole experience less traumatic for them. Ros finds the whole process very rewarding.

You can read other case study examples on our website.

PPG tips – helpful hints from other groups

Making the most of the festivities
The King Edward Road Surgery PPG in Northampton runs a Christmas raffle each year to help raise funds to support activities and new initiatives. As well as a range of donated prizes including chocolates, biscuits and bottles of wine, cash prizes range from £25 to £100.

This event raises money for the annual PPG’s newsletter, ‘Contact’, as well as the purchase of new equipment. In previous years, proceeds have helped purchase a dermascope to aid diagnoses, a wheelchair for patients to use in the surgery and a defibrillator for emergency use. This year, the raffle has funded an additional refrigerator for the Swine Flu vaccine, allowing vaccines to be stored on each floor of the surgery.

Supporting vulnerable patients
Geraldine Evans, founding member of the Meadowfields Practice PPG in Derby joined the group after losing her husband to cancer. She wanted to ensure a bereavement service was set up for other patients. Geraldine says that a good way of providing unobtrusive support to the recently bereaved is for patients to receive a call from a member of the practice team a month after the death of a loved one, to check that they are coping.

If you have a hint or tip to share, email us your contribution.
 

The campaign out and about

The Growing Patient Participation campaign at last month’s Royal College of General Practitioner’s conference in Glasgow. Thanks to those of you who joined us at our stand.