What is patient and public involvement?
Patient and public involvement is a way for patients, their families and carers to work in partnership with healthcare staff to help ensure that our services meet their needs.
Listening to and understanding patients' experiences of their healthcare - which includes the different interactions they have in a healthcare setting - helps us inform how our services are designed and delivered. Quality improvement projects to improve patient care are therefore carried out 'with' or 'by' these groups to make sure their experiences, voices and ideas are reflected at every stage of the project.
Is involvement the same as participation or engagement?
Involvement is not the same as participation or engagement. An example of participation is when a patient, carer or member of the public is invited to answer a research questionnaire for a project that has already been defined. The patient has little influence on the direction of the project.
An example of engagement is when the progress of an active project is communicated to patients and the public.
Get involved if you would like to:
- shape and improve different aspects of patient care that can benefit everyone
- share ideas on future changes to our heart, lung and critical care services
- help make sure our services are responsive to, and meet, the needs of patients
Read about some of the quality improvement projects that have been driven by patient and public involvement.
How to get involved
Give feedback online
The NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) survey runs continuously and is open to anyone who has had contact with our heart, lung or critical care services. Feedback from the survey is reported to NHS England monthly, and shared across our hospitals.
Click the links below to share your feedback on one or more of our services:
Share your story
Our digital storytelling initiative gives patients the opportunity to share their experience through their own words. It can help us get to know our patients better, understand their experiences of care, and provide memorable, qualitative feedback. Learn more about how you can share your story with us, or watch an example of digital storytelling as told by Harefield patient Charlie Churchill.
Join a patient feedback group
Patient and public engagement group (PPEG)
As a member of the patient and public enagement group, you can take part in quality improvement activities and transformation projects, give feedback about a service, and review patient resources and information. Find out more about the PPEG group and how to become a member.
Trailblazers - our patient youth group
Trailblazers is a youth group that offers patients aged 13-25 the opportunity to take part in social events with other young patients, have their say on our youth healthcare services, and get involved in workshops to boost their skills. Learn more and sign up.
Independent support groups
You can also join independent support groups that are not part of the Trust and run independently, with their own aims and priorities, including Harefield Hamsters, a group for transplant patients and their families/carers, and Breath Easy Kensington and Chelsea, a support groups for people living with a lung condition.
Become a member
Our Trust members are made up of our staff, patients and the public who volunteer to be members. All patients and members of the public are welcome to join us as a member. Learn more about our membership benefits and how you can become a member.
Our strategy
Our patient and public engagement strategy is under review. It will reflect our overarching strategic framework and will follow NHS England’s Experience and Improvement Framework (2018), with a focus on improving patient care through our 'listen, learn, lead' model.
Listening to our patients, their families and carers
Treating patients with respect and dignity and involving them in decisions about their care is important. This includes ensuring we listen to what patients say and act on their feedback. We gather feedback across all of our services, using different methods. This approach gives us a better understanding of how patients- experience care at our hospitals.
Learning from their experiences of care
Bringing together a range of data collected at different points in the patient journey helps us understand what care feels like from a patient’s perspective and is likely to result in more effective patient-centred care.
Leading improvements and bringing patients and staff together
We are committed to involving patients in decisions about how our healthcare services are designed, delivered and evaluated. Bringing together patients’ lived experiences of their heart and lung conditions, along with their experiences of treatment and care, helps to ensure that improvements to healthcare take a patient-first approach.