Surgery patient group wins national patient participation award

Denton Village Surgery is a rural practice, serving 15 villages and over 6,000 registered patients. Connected by rural roads to the east of Northampton it has unique opportunities and challenges. Patient participation groups (PPG’s) are formed to work with the practice to provide the patients’ voice in non-clinical matters helping the surgery to improve the experience of patients.

When Covid put pressure on the practice, the Denton Surgery Patients’ Group provided support in a number of ways, including weekly collection /delivery of prescriptions and urgent food parcels. Our Covid experience highlighted some future patient challenges and, working with the Practice Manager and Social Prescribers, we made a positive decision to address these.

Clearly some patients found it difficult to attend appointments and, due to post-Covid isolation, some were experiencing increased loneliness and anxiety, potentially impacting their wellbeing. Our rural communities are poorly served by public transport and private services are expensive. Ad hoc arrangements with helpful friends/ neighbours could not always be guaranteed. To address this challenge, we decided to consider re-instating a transport service to and from the surgery and to wider medical care facilities (e.g. Northampton General Hospital) that had ceased some time ago.

With the financial help of village Parish Councils and a grant from the Covid Recovery fund we have been able to establish the Voluntary Patient Transport Scheme (VPTS) and set about recruiting volunteer drivers. This was not without its challenges, but the VPTS service has proved very successful and numbers of patients using the service is increasing reflecting demand and surgery recommendation.

We noticed immediately that most patients wanted to talk, not just whilst travelling but also once at home. This was discussed with the practice manager and, working with the Social Prescribers employed by ParkWood Primary Care Network to which we are part, a patient social group has been organised and meets at a village church coffee shop once a fortnight. Our volunteer drivers collect patients from the various villages. There is a programme of events for each meeting and patients also identify specific activities they would like to undertake.

The two initiatives work together and have the benefit of raising the profile of our PPG, enhancing our relationship with, and representation in, our community.

By fundraising through grant applications, we hope to extend our work in the community with further meeting places, outings and establishing wellbeing areas in the villages that are part of our surgery community.

Winning the Corkill Award has already had a positive impact on what we do. VPTS driver recruitment has improved although we are always on the lookout to recruit more drivers as the scheme expands. The DSPG would like to hear from any individuals who would be interest in joining our Patient Participation Group and help us in represent the wider patients’ voice from all groups, ages and villages.