Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Outpatient survey 2011

Published 3 February 2012

We use national surveys to find out about the experience of patients when receiving care and treatment from healthcare organisations. Between June and October 2011, a questionnaire was sent to patients who had recently attended an outpatient appointment for each NHS trust in England.

Responses were received from 472 patients at Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

• Before the appointment

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.0 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Waiting in the hospital

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 5.1 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Hospital environment and facilities

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.7 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Tests and treatments

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.3 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Seeing a doctor

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.9 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Seeing another professional

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.9 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Overall about the appointment

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.3 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Leaving the outpatients department

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 6.7 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

• Overall impression

  Patient Response For each question in the survey, people's responses are converted into scores, where the best possible score is 10/10 8.8 / out of 10

  Compared with other trusts Each trust received a rating of Better, About the same or Worse on how it performs for each question, compared with most other trusts. About the same

About these scores

We asked people to tell us what they thought about different aspects of the care and treatment they received. Each NHS trust received scores out of 10, based on the responses given by their patients'. A higher score is better. Each trust also receives a rating. The rating ‘better’ means that the trust is better than most other trusts who took part in the survey for that particular question, a rating of ‘about the same’ means that the trust is about the same as most other trusts and a rating of ‘worse’ means that the trust did not perform as well as most other trusts for that question.

The results from each NHS trust take into account the age and sex of respondents for each trust, compared with the age and sex of all people across England that returned the questionnaire. This is because trusts have differing profiles of patients. For example, one trust may have more male outpatients than another. This can potentially affect the results because people tend to answer questions in different ways, depending on certain characteristics. This could potentially lead to a trust’s results appearing better or worse than if they had a slightly different profile of patients.

We do not provide a single overall rating for each NHS trust. This would be too simplistic as the survey assesses a number of different aspects of patient experience (such as before the appointment, seeing doctors, medications) and trust performance varies across these different aspects. This means that it is not possible to compare the trusts overall. It is better to look at the trusts in your area and see how they perform across the aspects that are most important to you.