The survey, which was launched last year, aims to give patients the opportunity to share their experiences of care to help identify what is working well in our hospitals, and where improvements are needed.
University Hospital Waterford ranked the lowest of all Irish Hospitals for patient satisfaction in 2017.
The inaugural survey revealed that 79% of patients gave the hospital a very good or good rating compared to the national average of 84%.
Speaking to Dermot Keyes on the Saturday Show, programme director for National patient Experience Survey Rachel Flynn said that the engament from patients last year was incredible.
"A number of patients wrote up to 8 pages of text," she said, "You don't feedback on something that you don't believe can be improved.. and from a national point of view the results were positive, but one of the reasons why we do the survey is to identify areas where we can make improvements."
HIQA CEO Phelim Quinn, visiting University Hospital Waterford on Tuesday, encouraged all eligible patients in Waterford and Tipperary to participate in the survey:
“This is a great opportunity for patients to tell us about their experiences in hospital. Almost 14,000 patients participated in the inaugural survey last year — an exceptional response rate for a survey of this kind. The results of the 2018 survey will enable us to pinpoint where positive progress has been made in our hospitals over the last 12 months and identify where further work is needed.”
Richard Dooley, General Manager at University Hospital Waterford, commented: “Once again we are delighted to be part of the National Patient Experience Survey.
The results of the 2017 survey helped us see what is working well in our hospital and what needs to be improved. We used the results to develop quality improvement plans which are being worked on by various groups in the hospital. We encourage our patients to participate in the survey this year as we value their feedback — even small changes can improve a patient’s experience.”
