Recent Projects

Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire’s report on the Enter and View they conducted at Northampton General Hospital’s Ophthalmology Department has now been published.

In February, Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire representatives visited Northampton General Hospital’s Ophthalmology Department. They conducted an Enter and View on the department, with the aim to review the services provided through the perspective of the patient. 

On the day of the visit, our representatives were joined by NGH’s Head of Patient Experience and Engagement as well as the Directorate Manager of the Ophthalmology Department. They went to the Ophthalmology Outpatients, Eye Casualty Unit, the Singlehurst Clinic and the Singlehurst Theatre Bubble. During the time at the department, they also got to speak with staff and patients – gaining insightful feedback from working in and being patients of the department. The information gained from the visit has been used to make recommendations to the department, as well as acknowledging areas where quality care was being provided.

Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire have now published their report on patient transport.

As a result of feedback received from the public, we were made aware of the issues regarding transportation to clinical appointments in Northamptonshire. Due to this feedback, we decided to conduct a survey in order to better understand the experiences individuals have had with patient transport. We are pleased to share that this report is now published and you can view our findings and recommendations towards the service providers below.

Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire partnered with West Northamptonshire Council to conduct research on the experiences of individuals with respiratory conditions and we are happy to announce that this report is now available.

The aim of this project was to address health inequalities and inequalities that surround respiratory care and outcomes. It also had the purpose of better understanding the experiences of those groups who are more vulnerable to health inequalities, respiratory conditions and other long-term conditions in the local communities.

The project was targeted to those within the N4 Local Area Partnership (LAP), which covers the local areas of Northampton as a result of WNC’S identification of this being an area which has respiratory diseases as a community priority for action. To facilitate this project, our organisation partnered with Northamptonshire Carers Breathing Space support group and Change Grow Live’s Substance to Solution Service. 

Read the full report below.

We are pleased to publish our 15 Steps Visit at Northampton General Hospital Report, which was performed and created by Young Healthwatch Northamptonshire.

In November 2023, Young Healthwatch Northamptonshire was invited to Northampton General Hospital to assess and provide feedback on the wards visited. They did this by using the 15 steps method and were able to provide a young person’s perspective when giving feedback on areas of improvement and excellence.

We now have published a report detailing our findings. The report was written by Young Healthwatch volunteers in their own words, allowing the young volunteers to express their opinions and then finalised by the Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire staff. The report is based on what they observed and the people they spoke to. The full report can be accessed below.

Patients at Oakham Medical Practice (OMP) shared their views and recent experiences of services at the Practice in Healthwatch Rutland’s (HWR) latest Enter and View report.

HWR wanted to explore how patients are experiencing the many changes that have been made at the Practice throughout the last year or so.

Working in collaboration with the OMP Patient Participation Group, 82 people were interviewed across 6 visits to the Practice in August and September 2023. In addition, 1055 people completed a survey, which was available both online and in hardcopy.

• The majority of people interviewed said the quality of medical care is good (82%) compared with 47% of survey respondents giving the same rating.
• Patients are more confident and happier to see health care professionals other than GPs and the practice nurses are valued highly.
• During the visits, almost equal numbers of patients said they found it easy to make an appointment as found it difficult. This shows a variance against survey responses where just under one third of patients said they find it easy to make appointments and just under two thirds said they find it difficult.
• When asked “What one thing about the Practice would you change?” the biggest proportion of survey respondents (42%) wanted more appointments to be available.

The report includes 10 recommendations and a response to the findings and recommendations from Practice Management.