Questionnaire: People who have recently been patients in an acute hospital will soon get a chance to give their verdict on the state of the health service.
Some 14,000 recently-discharged patients from around the State will receive a questionnaire in the post in November asking for their views on how well they were treated.
It will be the largest survey of patients ever to be carried out in the State.
The National Patient Perception Survey 2004 aims to provide feedback to hospitals about what they are doing well and what they need to improve on.
It will be carried out by the Irish Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare (ISQSH) in partnership with the hospitals.
Its president, Dr Ian Callanan said: "Professionals in healthcare tend to think they are doing their very best for patients all the time and that they are patient-centred. But often they are not. They are thinking of it from a technical point of view or from an administrative point of view rather than from a consumer point of view.
"What professionals need to do is to put themselves into the position of patients and to design services that are appropriate and wanted by patients," he said.
Dr Callanan gave the example that patients might prefer not to have to go to accident and emergency departments in hospitals for certain services or to return to hospitals for outpatient clinics if these could be accessed in different ways. "Professionals tend to concentrate things in hospitals," he said.
ISQSH's members include doctors, nurses, paramedics and administrators. It receives funding from the Department of Health but is independent of it. Some of the survey costs are met by individual hospitals.
A total of 63 hospitals are taking part in the survey and participants will be randomly selected from lists of recent patients. Dr Callanan said the survey would allow hospitals to see how well they were doing in comparison with others. Results will be published next spring. A similar survey was carried out in 2002 but just 3,000 questionnaires were sent out and there was a 55 per cent response rate.
The questionnaire is detailed and asks for very specific information, for example, people are asked if they ever had to go to help another patient because no nurse was available.
Dr Callanan appealed to all those who receive a questionnaire to fill it out because responses will be used to try to improve services.