Want to be involved and help out your surgery?

If you’ve ever wanted to see what goes on behind a GP practice and be part of changes then the PPG may be for you.

A Patient Participation Group (PPG) is a group of patients, carers and GP practice staff who meet to discuss practice issues and patient experience to help improve the service.

The purpose of a PPG:

To give patients and practice staff the opportunity to meet and discuss topics of mutual interest.

To provide a means for patients to become more involved and make suggestions about the healthcare services they receive.

To explore issues from patient complaints and patient surveys, contribute to actions plans and help monitor improvements.

To contribute feedback to the practice on National Patient Survey results and Friends and Family Test feedback to propose developments or change.

To support health awareness and patient education.

PPG is open to every patient on the GP practice list. All communities, groups, genders, ages, ethnicities, and disabilities representing the patient list are encouraged to join. There are no other membership requirements except that patients must be registered with the practice.

What can a PPG do?

Discuss constructive suggestions for improving the practice, and share concerns that could affect the wider practice population.

Organise health focused events with the practice, i.e. healthy eating awareness as an information event for all practice patients to attend.

Create a patient survey with practice staff, to get feedback about the practice from the rest of the patient population.

Design a newsletter for the practice, to provide regular updates to patients.

Assist the practice in making sure their website is ‘Patient Friendly’.Engage with the local community via fundraising events and useful health information, to ensure the PPG is representative.

Invite health and voluntary professionals to PPG meetings, for PPG members to remain informed and updated about local opportunities for patients.

What can a PPG NOT do?

PPG patient members cannot provide any medical advice to other patients, or deal with personal/medical issues or individual patient complaints during the meeting. These should be dealt with outside the meeting following the practices already established procedures.

If you would be interested in joining our new virtual PPG please email us with your interest.Please provide your full name and address so we can confirm you are one of our [email protected]

As soon as we have enough participants we can get going. There will be opportunity to join at a later time if you want to think about it (places permitting).Here is some more information about PPG’s.