Patients at a Bradford hospital are being urged to let health chiefs know what they think about their outpatient treatment.

A touch-screen TV where patients can leave feedback about the service they have received is up and running at St Luke’s adult outpatients department.

The comments left by patients are being used to help Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which manages the hospital, improve the standard of care it offers.

In the first six months since the television was installed, 187 people left their views on how they rated the service. Now more outpatients are being asked to take part in the survey.

Adele Hartley-Spencer, clinical service manager, said: “The touch-screen survey was developed to enable us to be responsive to patient feedback in a timely and proactive way.

“Having the information immediately available helps us to be more alert and responsive to patients’ needs, feed back results to staff and patients, and focus on improvements where required.”

Responses so far reveal that 76 per cent of patients received an introduction from the doctor or nurse before treatment or examination and 84 per cent said they were given privacy when discussing their condition or treatment.

Eighty per cent stated they were as involved in decisions about their care and treatment as they wanted to be, 81 per cent reported they had enough time to discuss concerns and 89 per cent said staff were polite and helpful.

But areas for improvement flagged up in the Foundation Trust’s national outpatient survey for 2011 included the need for more information to be given to patients about treatment, patients wanting to be given a choice of appointment times, and to be informed about medication side effects, danger signals to watch out for and who they should contact if worried after they leave hospital.

Mrs Hartley-Spencer added: “The initial overall feedback has been very positive as the majority of patients reported a positive experience of the care and treatment.

“But we know that there is always room for improvement, so we would urge everyone visiting St Luke’s outpatients in the coming months to take a few minutes to participate in giving us the feedback we need.”

Work is taking place to translate the survey into five different languages to ensure the results are a true representation of Bradford patients.