Feedback from Patients | Medical Appraisal Scotland

Scottish Medical Appraisal & Revalidation Toolkit Supporting Information Feedback from Patients

Patient Survey Questionnaires (PSQs)

As part of your revalidation, you are asked to seek feedback from patients once in a 5-yearly revalidation cycle and review and act upon that feedback where appropriate.

Which survey to use?

Unlike MSF, there is no central PSQ system in place for all doctors/specialty to access in Scotland.

Management and provision of PSQ has been deferred to the local health boards and most will have put in place support and resources for managing the dissemination and collection of patient questionnaires. You are advised to liaise with your health board teams in the first instance for guidance. They will be able to confirm what tools will be acceptable to your Responsible Officer.

Generally, patient surveys should include feedback from a minimum of 25 patients; and you need to include your reflections on this as part of your supporting information. It is important that the questionnaire used provides feedback that allows reflection on your own personal practice.

There are a number of different tools and services available for patient surveys, two of the more popular choices are:

CARE Measure - a free tool but you need admin support for someone independent to you to process your feedback and give you an anonymised report of your results
FourteenFish Patient Surveys - a commercial provider that will manage the report collating for you (but you still need reception team to distribute and collect the forms and send it to them)

We are NOT endorsing usage of ANY of the above tools as there will be others used depending on your health board and/or specialty. To reiterate, liaise with your health board teams in the first instance to find out which tool is acceptable to the RO for revalidation purposes.

The GMC has outlined that to obtain patient feedback you should:

use an independent provider to process your feedback and give you an anonymised report of your results;
minimise bias in the selection of patients asked to take part (e.g. by asking a colleague to approach a number of consecutive patients, or a random sample);
consider whether there are any settings where you have a more established working relationship, where support staff might be willing to help.

If you are struggling to find an appropriate tool to use in your role, you can contact the GMC for further support, or refer to your college website.

Timing

PSQ is not something that can be done overnight, it can take several months so make sure you plan this in advance. Consider initiating this in years 3 or 4 of your revalidation cycle. Avoid doing PSQ in the revalidation year if possible so you are not putting unnecessary time stress on yourself.

Reflection

When reflecting on your feedback results, consider:

How well did you communicate with the patient?
Did the patient feel respected?
Did the patient have sufficient opportunity to tell their story?
Did the patient feel a partner to the outcome of the consultation?
How do you gauge these?
What skills can you identify which will enhance these?

Patient Survey Questionnaires (PSQs)

Patient Survey Questionnaires (PSQs)

Which survey to use?

Timing

Reflection

Related Documents