National Patient and Staff Surveys

NHS England produces and uses a range of different surveys as a valuable source of feedback directly from patients, services users and NHS staff about the care that they receive or provide.

Information from patient experience surveys is one way to understand what service users think about their recent care and treatment. Survey results can be used to check progress and improvement of care providers, and to hold them to account for the outcomes they achieve. These uses of patient feedback information can improve the quality of services that the NHS delivers.

This page provides links to survey results published by both NHS England and results published by partner organisations on behalf of NHS England, it also includes links to survey results published by CQC.

Primary Care – GP Patient Survey

The GP Patient Survey assesses patients’ experience of healthcare services provided by GP surgeries, including experience of access to GP surgeries, making appointments, the quality of care received from GPs and practice nurses, satisfaction with opening hours and experience of out-of-hours NHS services. The survey also includes a number of questions assessing patients’ experience of NHS dental services.

More about the GP Patient Survey

More about the GP Patient Survey covering Dental Services

Secondary Care Surveys

CQC publishes patient experience surveys in secondary care under their National Patient Survey Programme. This includes surveys for Outpatients, Inpatients, Accident & Emergency, Maternity, Community Mental Health and Children & Young People.

More about CQC’s Survey Programme

More about NHS Surveys including copies of questionnaires and supporting documentation

In addition, NHS England publishes the Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES).

Cancer Patient Experience Survey

The Cancer Patient Experience Survey is conducted by Quality Health on behalf of NHS England. The aim of the survey is to provide insight on patient experience of cancer care. It has been designed to monitor national progress as well as to provide information to drive local quality improvements.

More about the Cancer Patient Experience Survey

Overall Patient Experience Scores

The Overall Patient Experience Scores are a statistical series measuring overall patient views of care and services provided by the NHS. The statistics are composite scores constructed using results taken from CQC’s National Patient Survey Programme (specifically the Inpatient, Outpatient, Community Mental Health and Accident & Emergency surveys), that are published by NHS England on the same day that CQC publish the national survey results.

More about the Overall Patient Experience Scores

Care in the last few months of life

The National Survey of Bereaved People (VOICES) is conducted by the Office of National Statistics on behalf of NHS England. The aims of the survey are to assess the quality of care delivered in the last three months of life for adults who died in England

To make sure that the survey remains fit for purpose, we ran a public consultation between 27 March and 23 June 2015. We have published our summary report on the Views Of Informal Carers’ Evaluation of Services – Short Form (VOICES-SF) survey public consultation. This can be found here.  In light of these findings, we have commissioned an options appraisal. This will explore how capturing feedback on End of Life care can be improved by seeking to act upon the consultation responses.

More about VOICES

Patient Reported Outcome Measures

Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS) assess the quality of care delivered to NHS patients from the patients’ perspective. Currently covering four clinical procedures (hip replacements, knee replacements, groin hernia and varicose veins), PROMs calculate the health gains after surgical treatment using pre- and post-operative surveys.

More about PROMS

Friends and Family Test

The Friends and Family Test (FFT) is an important feedback tool that supports the fundamental principle that people who use NHS services should have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience.

It asks people if they would recommend the services they have used and offers a range of responses. When combined with supplementary follow-up questions, the FFT provides a mechanism to highlight both good and poor patient experience. This kind of feedback is vital in transforming NHS services and supporting patient choice.

More about the Friends and Family Test 

NHS Staff Survey

The NHS Staff Survey is carried out by the NHS Staff Survey Co-ordination Centre, and collects staff views about working in their NHS organisation.

More about the NHS Staff Survey