PATIENT power is sweeping across Northumberland as people take the chance to talk about their care.
New surveys are being rolled out across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Trust to assess the quality of its hospital treatment and community services.
The work is being carried out by a team of people who have previously used mental health serv
ices and each patient is paid £10 to take part.
The questionnaire covers the effectiveness of provision, relationships with staff and patients' hopes for the future to try to understand the impact of care and how it can be improved.
Development and User Involvement Officer Angela Glascott said: "In our experience, some mental health care is not always focused on the reality of how patients feel so we saw the potential to start measuring the genuine human experiences that patients have.
"We challenged protocols and established systems by using normal, non-clinical language and asking questions that suited the particular environment being experienced by patients.
"We found too that by paying patients to take part we were able to reach some people who normally would not be willing to be involved and talk about their experiences."
The surveys have already been used in psychiatric intensive care units, a community drug and alcohol service and secure forensic in-patient wards and there are plans to use them across the Trust.
The project has achieved national recognition after winning the mental health category of the Involvement to Impact Awards, set up by the NHS Centre for Involvement.
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