The Walton Centre at Healthwatch - Partnership Event

Healthwatch Liverpool, Healthwatch Sefton and The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust organised an online engagement event on 8 February 2022. We invited patients, relatives and patient groups to tell us about their own experiences and to learn more about the work that goes on at the Trust.

In total 15 people attended, including staff from The Walton Centre’s Patient Experience Team, staff from Healthwatch Sefton and Healthwatch Liverpool, representatives from the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society and the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA), as well as individual patients.

The event began with a presentation from the Walton Centre Patient Experience team followed by discussions in smaller groups.

Even though this was a small event, the feedback received was useful and can help to pinpoint where services are doing well, and where some improvements can be made.

Conclusions

There was a lot of praise for The Walton Centre, and some suggestions for improvements, especially about information and signposting for patients. We have added some recommendations below.

The Walton Centre’s patient experience team will listen to feedback from groups and individuals and try to address any concerns, including by raising them at the Trust’s Patient Experience Group meeting.

Recommendations

Information and signposting were mentioned several times at the event. We recommend that The Walton Centre:

• For conditions such as MND and MS, provide information packs at the point of diagnosis, so that people can read and take the information in when they are ready (with relevant telephone numbers for The Walton Centre helplines, as well as information from other organisations that can provide support);
• has information about mental health support readily available to all staff and patients;
• check when patients are discharged and at each outpatient appointment that patients are aware of contact numbers for nurse specialists where these exist for specific conditions;
• ensure that information from/about organisations that can provide help and support -including peer support- like the Brain Charity, MNDA and the MS Society are readily available to patients.