Hi readers, 

As some of you know, I write this column each week in Carluccios. When it’s sunny we sit outside on their nice balcony. But today, for the first time ever, we’re sitting inside as it’s SO hot! It’s nice to feel the warmth but I hope it will cool down in the next few days as it’s too hot for me.  

Anyway, today I want to share with you a video we launched last week. It’s called ‘Simple Steps to a better NHS’ and features a project we carried out for the NHS last year. Members of People First Dorset (all of whom have a learning disability) wanted to find out how accessible information is in NHS services like GP surgeries and hospitals. 

To do this, some of us went to GP surgeries and a hospital to look at things like information boards, referral letters and ordering prescriptions. We discovered that boards were often messy and very difficult for us to read. We also found the amount of information generally was overwhelming and hard to understand.  

So what we did was made lots of simple suggestions as to how surgeries and hospitals could improve things. This included making information boards less cluttered and divided into different sections. 

We then made this film of our research and ideas for improvement. I am very proud of being involved because it’s helping people with disabilities to have a good experience when they use NHS services. That has to be a positive thing.  

Now I hope people (especially those in the health sector) will watch it, learn from it and keep improving things for us in the NHS.

Watch the film here

See you next week! 

The writers of the Our View column are supported in their editing by The Friendship Club– a project for adults with learning disabilities, run by People First Dorset