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Increasing Engagement at the Penrhyn Practice People Participation Group

Our key driver for selecting this project

We had a small number of people attending the people participation group (PPG) and we wanted to increase engagement in order to make future improvements in the partnership.

Our aim

To increase the engagement in the people participation group by February 2021 as measured by:

  • Staff engagement in people participation group
  • Increased number of interactions from patients
  • Increase in shared responsibilities and actions from meetings
  • Increase in membership of group
  • Increase in attendance at group meetings
  • Increase in number of different engagements within the meeting (how many people speak)

Our Journey

With a few participants attending the PPG face to face, we decided to work on this project to increase the engagement but just then the world went virtual due to COVID. We could either delay the project or start later when things seemed normal or jump onto the virtual bandwagon – and we chose the latter.

Some of the staff members didn’t know what a PPG meant so we had to take a few steps back and have a discussion with the practice staff about this to make sure the team was aligned on what we were trying to achieve. Following this meeting, two more staff members got involved in this project.

What worked for us

  • Collaborating with 25 enthusiastic students from Newham College who supported the advertisement of the PPGs through posters and templates
  • Text messaging patients before the meetings using the batch messaging free text service (getting the word out is extremely important)
  • Making changes to the timings to make sure the timings work better for We did this following a survey via survey monkey where we got 6 responses
  • Changing the frequency of the meetings to once every quarter and publishing all the dates for the entire year on the practice website
  • Changing the platform – virtual as opposed to face to face
  • Selecting topics that were relevant and resonated with patients. E.g.- Virtual Covid vaccination Q/A session, online consultations
  • Changing the structure of the group to offer flexibility –

-Open forums – Similar to walk-in sessions that anyone can attend following which based on interest they have the opportunity to join the PPG committee

-PPG committee – More structured meetings where commitment from patients is needed

  • Linking in with a social prescriber who helped us set up a gardening group

involving mental health patients. We’ve now secured funding from OrganicLea to do up the garden by the flu clinic in our practice. The social prescriber will be involved in this gardening project as well.

  • Employing a reception manager who will be the PPG champion in their staff group to help organise and coordinate sessions with the group
  • Having a super dedicated, enthusiastic practice team and an EQUIP coach working on this project to maintain the momentum of the project and keep it going
  • Having strong sponsorship and leadership

Our top tips

  • Keep testing out different ideas – you’ll definitely come across some that work

for you

  • You need to be patient, put in hard work and time – and we hope your numbers double up just like ours!!

We’ve attached a beautiful poster that represents our project on a page.

Log into Life QI and then enter this link to have a look at the project in detail https://uk.lifeqisystem.com/projects/129361/general/ .

From the folks at EQUIP, on behalf of the Penrhyn Surgery A-Team

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