Friends and Family Test Awards 2016
To celebrate the positive changes to healthcare that are being produced through patient feedback, we want to find and recognise the services and people in the NHS who are making a real difference by organising the Friends and Family Test Awards 2016.
The Friends and Family Test is now operating across most of the NHS – in hospitals, community settings, on patient transport and in GP and dental services across England – and bringing in over a million pieces of near real-time feedback every month. Data shows that around 9 in 10 patients who take part would recommend the service they use, which is an enormous vote of confidence in the NHS.
The opportunity to give free-text comments with their response to the FFT question has meant patients making suggestions or highlighting specific issues that staff can address, leading to many examples of service improvement.
These awards are to highlight some of the excellent work that is going on and to say thank you to the individuals and teams who have championed the FFT across NHS-funded services as an important way to increase transparency and involve patients in shaping their services.
Why participate? It is an opportunity to: give your team a pat on the back; perhaps get some well-deserved local publicity; share your great ideas with other services; and maybe even scoop an award or certificate to display to your patients. Above all, it is a chance to show that listening to patients can drive real changes in healthcare, delivering improved services.
There are five categories to take part in – including one for Staff FFT – so why not get involved? We’d love to hear about the amazing initiatives you have led or the great work of some of your colleagues.
Entries will be used as case studies on the NHS England website to show how the FFT is working and share details of service improvement with other providers. There will be awards for the top three nominees in each category, with winners to be announced at a national FFT and Insight Conference to be held in Leeds on 17 March 2016.
Categories
The categories are:
- Best FFT initiative in Primary Care – Covering GP and dental practices.
- Best FFT initiative in any other NHS-funded service – Covering hospital services, ambulance and patient transport services, community and mental health trusts etc.
- Best FFT accessibility initiative – Open to any service that has made a particular effort to make giving FFT feedback easier for people who might otherwise be excluded due to their age, language, literacy, physical or mental condition.
- Best Staff FFT initiative – Open to those organisations who participate in the Staff FFT.
- FFT Champion(s) of the Year – An individual or team who has made the most outstanding contribution to the successful implementation of the FFT in any NHS-funded service.
How to take part
To take part all you need to do is complete the entry form and return it to the address given. The closing date has been extended from 8 January 2016 to Friday 15 January 2016.
Further information
If you have any questions, please email the FFT Helpdesk at england.friendsandfamilytest@nhs.net.
6 comments
Could you let me know if a GP who retired after 41 year in Nhs will be intiatile to be purpose for
this reward.
This award proposal is a complete waste of time and money. We do FFT because we are contractually bound to do so. Getting rid of the FFT team would save money that could then be spent on direct patient care.
“Data shows that around 9 in 10 patients would recommend…..”
This is not true.
9 in 10 patients who filled in a report would recommend the service they used. The people who fill in the forms are not a random sample of all those using a service.
Maybe a statistician could help you with working out how to weight the respnses?
I agree, a bit misleading, “9 out of 10 service users, who choose to complete the test, would recommend the service”
The F&F test is misuse of a commercial based test that is completely inappropriate or relevant for use in the health care setting in the first place.
Its yet another exercise devised to allow politicians come out with wonderful statistics of how the NHS is flourishing under their control. Pats on the back all round, how wonderful are we chaps!? As already pointed out, the “facts” which will be drawn from the stats are worthless and unsubstantiated anyway.
You are using a feedback method devised for private business, where the business model is to gain a larger customer base, thereby generating more turnover by keeping customers happy. This does NOT APPLY to the NHS.
The reality is F&F test used in the NHS is a complete and utter waste of time and money, and an inferior duplicate to the annual survey all practices already carry out each year anyway. The annual survey however IS an appropriate way to gather relevant feedback from its patients and improve services offered as a result. This is because it asks DETAILED questions that are relevant to the individual care settings to which it relates, which means the data gathered is specific, valid and useful (unlike the F&F test).
(no doubts) millions £ wasted on this pointless white elephant, that should have been spend on Primary Care directly where it WILL benefit patients, rather than Whitehall pen pushers and CEO frontmen running this farce of a scheme.
Hi Irene,
Thank you for you comment.
Thank you for your comment. You make a fair point and we have amended the wording to indicate that we mean 9 out of 10 patients who give feedback.
Kind Regards
NHS England