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Your feedback: January 2025

Your feedback: January 2025

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Health and social care feedback January 2025

The top issues you told us about this month were hospitals and GP services. We also had feedback on audiology services, as we’d asked what you think of these services as part of a piece of work we’re doing at the moment.
The biggest issues raised about hospitals were poor quality of care and distance to travel to get to appointments. Around 1 in 9 pieces of feedback about hospitals were positive.
Poor quality care was the most frequently raised concern regarding GP services although around a fifth of the comments we received about GPs were positive about the quality of care.
For audiology services the biggest issue was the length of time it takes to get an appointment.

This month’s focus

We restarted our Here to Hear drop-in sessions after Christmas with a new venue at Hexham General Hospital. We also visited Alnwick Dementia Café, Hexham Auction Mart, Seaton Delaval Welcome Café and took part in the Fishermen’s Mission SeaFit event at Amble.

At these events, plus online and through our networks, we promoted our Audiology Services survey. The results of this piece of work will be published early spring.

Our free online session was on fibromyalgia, given by Fibromyalgia Action UK, and was well attended by both the public and professionals.

Positive feedback
A woman told us that her daughter recently suffered a suspected heart attack and they called 999. The ambulance was two hours away so they were asked to make their own way to NSECH. When they got to hospital they were met by a volunteer who was extremely helpful and took the daughter to A&E in a wheelchair without having to be asked.
Once at A&E, she was triaged in 20 minutes and then had thorough medical investigations with a huge range of tests. NSECH staff were fantastic and diagnosed a muscelo-viral strain rather than a heart attack.
In addition the volunteers in the shop charged the mother’s phone whilst they were there so that she could keep in contact with the rest of the family.
Ashington and Blyth resident

Negative feedback
A person told us that they have to see different GPs each time they visit their surgery, either due to availability or GPs leaving. They commented that it can be difficult to build up any rapport when seeing a different GP and they don’t know your medical history – the person queries how they can be up to date with your history within such a short appointment time. They said that appointments feel rushed as they’re conscious that there are so many other patients waiting in line to see the GP. The person told us they feel that the surgery is good at seeing people when they need urgent care, often seeing them on the same day, but it isn’t so easy to book an appointment in advance for routine care. They have found there are no appointments showing online

Tynedale resident

Impact

“Thank you, really helpful, I understand the condition much better now. As a nurse in a hospital [I] did not deal with Fibromyalgia unless the patient was admitted with another condition which was our main priority.”

Feedback from an attendee at our fibromyalgia online information session.

Signposting and Information Service

You asked us about services including dementia support, psoriasis support, dentists, care in the home, housing support, Patient Transport Services, making an NHS complaint, audiology services and ADHD support.Where possible, we were able to signpost people to further help, support and information around this issues.

Read more in our short summary for January 2025.