Fewer hospital appointments missed thanks to one simple idea

Going to the hospital for an appointment should be a simple process. But if you have an impairment and services aren’t set up to meet your needs, that’s not always the case.

People who are deaf in Dudley told their local Healthwatch that going for medical appointments was sometimes difficult for them. They talked about their fear of missing appointments because they couldn’t hear their names being called in busy clinics, and their struggles to communicate with staff.

Healthwatch Dudley brought a group of deaf people together to find out more about their experiences and what could be done to make things better. The group shared how the risk of missing appointments was making deaf people feel extremely anxious. It was suggested that they could be given vibrating and flashing pagers to let them know when the doctor was ready to see them. The Trust embraced the idea and pagers have now been introduced to hospital waiting areas across Dudley borough and are being used not only for deaf patients, but also for those with other sensory and physical impairments.