Aim
The Patient Participation Group will support Hannage Brook Medical Practice by offering help, advice and guidance, to enhance both current provision and future developments.
The group:
- Meetings are convened at the discretion of the PPG committee and Hannage Brook Medical Centre.
- Will meet two to Four times per year. Additional ad hoc meetings and working groups may also meet when required.
- Members will be asked to confirm annually that they:
a. are registered patients at the practice;
wish to continue being members of the Patient Participation Group; - Will only discuss issues and information that is normally in the public domain and will not normally discuss any issues that are confidential, and confidential issues will not be minuted.
- May consider sensitive issues which are best regarded as confidential, and these will not be minuted.
- Members will always use discretion, tact and diplomacy when discussing the Health Centre and PPG meetings in public, and will generally promote the practice.
- May aid planning and could be consulted on service development and provision.
- May provide feedback on patients’ needs, concerns and interests.
- Act as a ‘safety valve’ for dealing with grumbles complaints together with positive suggestions about the practice.
- May feedback to the practice information about the community in general, which may affect healthcare.
- Will give patients a voice in the organisation regarding their care within the practice.
- Liaise with other Patient Participation Groups in the area where appropriate.
- Will elect members to committee positions annually.
- Will ‘self-review’ the effectiveness of the Patient Participation Group annually.
- Will record brief minutes of each meeting, with actions and where appropriate, who is responsible for each action.
- Will confirm accuracy of minutes of previous meetings and make amendments where necessary, which will then be formally endorsed by the Chair.
- Will be invited in advance to submit items for the agenda – normally notice will be given one month prior to the meeting, and no later than two weeks before the meeting.
- Will share an agenda before a meeting – normally two weeks before a meeting. Will be aligned with any online or other patients group that there may be at the practice, working in the context of these terms of reference.
- Will circulate PPG minutes online.
- Is not a political forum for serving politicians, although politicians may be invited to attend meetings on an ad hoc basis.
- Terms of Reference to be reviewed annually.
Members will:
- Not use the meetings as a forum for individual complaints and single issues.
- Have open honest communications and a courteous exchanges between individuals.
- Be flexible, ask for help and support each other.
- Demonstrate a commitment to delivering results as a group.
- Understand that silence indicates agreement – speak up but always go through the chair.
- Listen to all views expressed at the meetings.
- Ensure that there are no phone or other disruptions.
- Start and finish meetings on time. Where the agenda is ‘full’, items will be allocated times, the Chair may use their discretion to defer items to future meetings if necessary.
- Stick to the agenda.
- Wherever possible raise issues for the agenda before the meeting – thus giving the practice sufficient notice to prepare responses.
- Understand that items raised without notice at a meeting may need to be deferred to allow time for a response to be prepared.
