Patient, service user and carer stories
The Trust invites people that use our services and carers, to share their stories and their experiences.
Our Trust Board and staff listen to the stories, and get first-hand knowledge of the experiences that people have of our services, so they are central to their work.
If you want to share your story please get in touch with the patient experience and involvement team on involve@bdct.nhs.uk. Or, if you have a smart phone, why not record your experience and email it with your contact details.
We will always get your consent before sharing your story.
Trust Board stories
By ‘stories’ we mean a first-hand account of your experience. Stories have been a powerful way to communicate with others, ever since the human race began. It is one of the main ways we learn, from our earliest childhood, and personal stories are often the thing that we remember most and which has most impact on us.
Because of this, the Trust invites people that use our services and/ or their carers, to share their stories and their experiences with us in various ways. One important way, which means your voice is heard by the most senior staff in the Trust, is some stories being shared directly with the Trust Board of Directors and other staff.
By listening to the stories they get first-hand knowledge of the experiences that people have of our services and what has been learned from this, and this helps them in making decisions and understanding how well services are working and meeting your needs.
We can also use your stories in other ways, for example in training staff, and assessing how services are doing, bringing ‘real world’ insights, and helping our staff to ‘walk a mile in your shoes’ develop empathy and think about what they do and how they do it, so we are always improving care.
Your story can be about any of our wide range of services in hospitals, clinics or in the community and can be about any aspect of the care we provide – not just direct patient care – for example, we want to know about your experience of how we communicate, the information we provide, our buildings and facilities and how we listen to and involve you. We know that for the NHS to be at its best, the things we do ‘behind the scenes’ can really matter and make the difference to you getting great care.