The Northgate Surgery Patient Participation Group
The Northgate Surgery Patient Group is a group of patients, registered with the practice, coming together on a regular basis, usually bi-monthly, to look at how they can positively influence the development of health services within their own practice and also within the wider community.
The members of our group are both male and female within age groups 20-66+. Members are from all walks of life, some professional, some retired.
There is usually a GP in attendance at each meeting and also at least one staff member.
The minutes of meetings are published on the website after approval at the next group meeting, so that patients can see what issues are being discussed. The group occasionally invite speakers from different organisations/professions to give a presentation to the members explaining what their particular service provides to patients locally.
The practice strives to ensure that the PPG is representative of its whole patient population by making information on the group available within the practice on the PPG notice board, via this website and in the local library. Anyone interested in joining the group, or just wanting some more information, should either speak to a receptionist, complete one of the expression of interest forms or email the surgery to have it forwarded to the PPG group - e-mail northgate.surgery@nhs.net and use PPG as the e-mail subject.
One of the requirements of the group is to assist the practice with identifying areas for improvement. Suggestions from patients and visitors to the surgery are collated and presented for discussion between the group and the practice, with the intention of implementing changes wherever possible. Feedback and suggestions are gathered predominently from responses to our Friends & Family questionnaire and to the GP National Patient Survey, a link to which can be found below:
Click here to take the Family and Friends Test.