Charter for Improving People and Community Experience
This Charter tells you what you can expect when you use our services and receive care. We want your experience of using our services to be positive every time. In our plan for improving health services (A Healthier Mid and West Wales Strategy) we set out our aim for all in our communities to live healthy and joyful lives and we promise to provide safe services, which are easy to use.
Click here to visit the Healthier mid and west Wales webpage (opens in new tab).
Together we are building kind and healthy places to live and work in mid and west Wales. The Charter aligns to our Health Board mission and our six strategic objectives:
- working together to be the best we can be;
- strive to deliver and develop excellent services;
- the best health and well-being for our communities;
- safe, sustainable, accessible and kind care;
- sustainable use of resources;
- putting people at the heart of everything we do.
The most important way we can make this happen is to involve people and our communities. We know that a good experience – being listened to, respected, understood, and fully involved in your health care – brings improvements in health and well-being.
Individuals have already told us about the many examples of excellent care from our staff, but this is not the case for everyone, every time. By listening to what you say about what it feels like to receive a service, and understanding your point of view, we can make improvements to your care and treatment.
We know some people feel worried about reporting a bad experience and may be concerned about this having an impact on their treatment or care. We welcome any feedback and we encourage you to share it with us so that we can put things right.
We have provided more information about the promises to explain what you can expect from our staff and services. We have also suggested how you can help us meet your individual needs and provide better care.
We have developed this Charter with help from our patients, people, communities and staff. They told us about what matters to them when receiving health care and what would create a good experience, all of the time. This has helped us to make a number of promises that we call ‘always experiences’ – those parts of the care you receive that should always happen.
We will always:
- treat you with dignity, respect and kindness;
- communicate with you in a way which meets your individual, language and communication needs;
- keep you informed and involved in decisions about your health and care services, and take into account your wishes and needs;
- provide safe and effective care, in the most appropriate and clean environment;
- ensure that your information is kept secure and confidential;
- support and encourage you to share your experiences of health care, both good and bad, to help us improve the way we do things.
Making a difference
We have several ways to check that this Charter is making a positive difference to people and community experiences.
One of the most important ways we will do this is by listening to your feedback about your experience of our services. We receive feedback in a number of ways: survey responses, compliments and complaints, through our Patient Support Service, ward areas, appointment discussions, and stories from patients, their loved ones and from staff.
We already collect a lot of information to help us improve the quality of our services. We will regularly measure the ‘always experiences’ to see how well we are doing and report these to continually seek improvements where needed.
This information will be gathered and used by individual services but also reviewed by our Board Members. This information will help the Board Members to recognise and share good practice and identify areas for improvement.
We will share our progress with you on our website, through our Public Board and displaying information on our improvements throughout our hospital and community areas on our notice boards.
* Hywel Dda University Health Board provides NHS care and treatment to the populations of Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.
*‘NHS care and treatment’ refers to any services provided or commissioned (arranged) by Hywel Dda University Health Board and its staff including hospitals, community services, mental health, learning disability services. This also includes GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists (primary care services).
When we say ‘people’ and ‘communities’ we mean:
- patients who use healthcare services;
- their parents, carers and family members;
- their nominated advocates (people who support you to be heard or speak on your behalf); and
- people who may need to use healthcare services in the future.