As the only pan-London NHS Trust, we are in a unique position to
involve a diverse range of patients and members of the public from
a wide variety of areas and communities. 
Our aims
We are committed to patient and public
involvement (PPI) and aim to involve patients and the public in all
our key developments, as well as through public education and other
activities such as public fairs and events.
We aim to provide services that meet the needs
and expectations of our patients and the public, but also to learn
from them and enable them to influence our strategic direction and
service developments.
Our plan and strategy
Our patient and
public involvement action plan (PDF, 106KB) sets out our
legal obligations and responsibilities to conduct PPI activity in a
meaningful and consistent way.
This is supported by the public education
strategy (PDF, 91KB) and
public education action plan (PDF, 71KB), which give us a
framework through which to prioritise and support our public
education activities. Through this work there is a particular
emphasis on ensuring that staff involved in public education work
are supported with the knowledge, skills and materials to enable
them to do so to maximum effect.
It is a challenge to undertake PPI and public
education in a large, diverse city. However, these challenges also
present us with an opportunity to make a real difference through
our PPI and public education activities, both to patients and
carers, partner organisations, staff, and across networks in London
and nationally.
Each year we review our performance against
these plans and strategies, and develop new plans to make further
improvements.
Recent examples of our patient involvement
activities include:
- Members of our Patients’
Forum attend all our key committees.
- We have involved patients and the public in
the design of new ambulances.
- We are involving people with learning
disabilities in the development of our staff training
packages.
- People with learning disabilities have helped us to develop a
telephone
prompt booklet which gives them advice about what to do when
they are hurt or feeling unwell.
- We have involved deaf people in the
development of a 999 emergency text messaging service.
- We have involved patients with spinal injuries in the design of
our new ambulances.
Finding out people’s views
One aspect of PPI is finding out what patients
and the public think of our services. In the past we have carried
out surveys and consultations to find out people's views and
experiences.
We are making a number of changes to the
Service over the next three years and we are planning how to seek
people's views about these changes. Examples of some of these
changes are:
- Changes to our targets
- Changes to how we respond to 999 calls
- Changes to our buildings
We will continue to encourage patients to tell us about the care
they have received so we can make improvements. If you would like
to make any comments please contact our Patient Experiences Team
Our services are also monitored by
external bodies such as the Care Quality Commission and the Audit
Commission. In 2009/10 we maintained our score of “Excellent
(4)” as part of the Audit Commission’s ALE (Auditors Local
Evaluation) process for that year. This process is used
to evaluate how well we manage our resources.