We care for our patients, staff and community.

Here at Birchwood Medical Practice we pride ourselves on ensuring that our staff treat patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect and all of our staff are fully trained in order to do so.

We actively seek and receive patient and staff feedback through a variety of forms including having a suggestion box, the use of Friends and Family Tests and Patient Satisfaction Surveys. We then show that we have listened to our patients and where appropriate have made changes on our You Said, We Did section of our website and on our Feedback Display in Reception.

We engage with our Patient Participation Group and encourage new members to join through Registration Forms and our Website. There are eight regular members who meet quarterly with the practice manager and deputy manager to contribute suggestions for improvement. They are members of the National Association of Patient Participation.

We offer the use of Chaperones for appointments and Language Line and Google translate as interpreting services.

We have a Dedicated Learning Disability Nurse, Abbie Willows, who sees patients who have a learning disability and has this has helped us to offer continuity of care and to build up trust with those patients. These patients are offered an annual full assessment. We have also introduced a new Calm Corner in our Reception waiting area for any patient who would like to/needs to sit in a quieter and less busy environment.

We have a dedicated Carers Champion called Louise who has regular updates from Carers First to ensure we are supporting and giving our patients the most up to date information. We have produced carers packs for adult carers and young carers. We have a dedicated carers board in reception for patients to see when coming into the surgery and have various ways that our patients can register with us as a Carer (including on the website, forms at Reception and annual texts sent).

We have a variety of information that our patients may want more information on in a variety of formats to ensure that we cater for all our patient’s needs. We have information in a folder at reception on a variety of topics in different languages. We also have Easy Read leaflets on a variety of health conditions and health checks, we also have large text formats of leaflets and forms, as well

as documents in different languages. Our Quarterly Newsletter is also available in a large print version as well as being recorded with audio for those who need this.

We offer 1-1 appointments with one of our Administration Team to help support our patients who are not as tech savvy as others, to set up and use the NHS app on their mobile phone and also learn how to access the newsletter we send out quarterly.

We aim to visit people in their own homes when they are unable to come to surgery through ill health, disability, vulnerability, low immune systems due to hospital treatment or other constraints.

Staff are aware of agencies available to help patients and can signpost to these e.g., citizens advice, One You Lincolnshire and Carers First.

We care about our patients and local community and have started to build positive relationships with our Local Schools and Local Children’s Centre/Family Hub.