Happy with your care?
With the recent rise of consumerism within health care, the views of service users are becoming increasingly important. The National Service Framework for Mental Health (DoH 1999) identifies assertive outreach as a strategy to engage people with severe and enduring mental illness, who traditionally lose contact with services. Assessing the views of service users is not a new strategy for service evaluation, but in relation to assertive outreach in the United Kingdom is relatively untested. A postal client satisfaction survey was undertaken as a means of enquiry, in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the Preston Assertive Outreach service from a service user perspective after its first year of operation. The team offers a service based upon the PACT (Program of Assertive Community Treatment) model. An evaluation study of 36 questionnaires produced a return rate of 56% (21 returns). The results showed a fairly high level of client satisfaction with the service provided. Client involvement in treatment was the area of service evaluated least favourably by the service users, with General satisfaction showing the highest level of client satisfaction. From the outcome of the study it appears there are potential benefits in utilizing feedback from service users' to inform future service provision.
Graham
J
J
Shropshire County PCT NHS Trust, Telford, Shropshire, UK. janehelengraham@yahoo.ac.uk
Denoual
I
I
Cairns
D
D
D000328:Adult; D003156:Community Mental Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations / Q000592:standards*; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000592:standards; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D008875:Middle Aged; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000458:organization & administration; D010358:Patient Participation; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom