Friends and Family Test launch in Queen Mary Maternity Unit

Tomorrow (1 October) West Middlesex University Hospital will launch the Friends and Family Test (FFT) in the Queen Mary Maternity Unit. The FFT is a simple survey that asks patients whether they would recommend hospital services to their friends and family.

The FFT is a government initiative that aims to give hospitals and the public regular and up to date feedback on what patients think about their local NHS services.

The FFT in the maternity service will be measured at four different stages in a woman’s maternity pathway:

1. Ante-natal survey at 36 weeks
2. The Labour ward, Natural Birth Centre or at home
3. Care on the postnatal ward
4. Postnatal Community Care services (usually at 10 days postnatal)

Women will be asked if they would recommend the Maternity service to friends and family at these four stages in their birthing experience. Women will also be asked to provide further free text comments on the maternity services in order to seek more detail that can help recognise excellence and drive improvements.

Tonie Neville, General Manager for Women’s and Children’s Services said: “The Friends and Family Test is an exciting development for the maternity service at West Middlesex. Historically we have been successful at collecting and using patient feedback but the Friends and Family Test provides us with a good opportunity to further develop this.”

We started the FFT in adult inpatients and patients in A&E in April 2013 and have received an overwhelmingly positive response with 92%* of patients surveyed saying they would be either extremely likely or likely to recommend us to their friends and family.

West Middlesex University Hospital has a strong culture of involving its patients, families and careers in the development of our services and value all the feedback we receive. The responses we receive are fed back directly to all relevant staff as well as the Board so that we engage staff across the hospital and empower them to take action to improve the patient experience where necessary, and build upon success.

We have developed ‘You Said, We Did’ boards to display the data collected from the FFT and show patients what actions we have taken following their feedback to improve hospital services.