The Ivers Practice

The Ivers Practice Patient Participation Group

What are Patient Participation Groups (PPGs)?

A PPG is a group of people who meet to discuss their GP surgery and they usually consist of patient volunteers and practice staff. PPGs provide a forum for two-way communication between the practice and group members, giving patients the opportunity to influence decision making and support planning and delivery of practice initiatives. In order to be valuable, PPGs should provide ideas, constructive feedback, avoid prejudice and negativity, and help to enable a service or function to develop positively. PPGs should act as representatives of their patient population.

What can PPGs do?

PPGs can:

  • escalate practice issues. The PPG can help share issues with practice staff and can highlight recurrent themes.
  • help to escalate wider commissioning issues. Commissioning is about commissioners becoming much closer
    to patients. PPGs should fit into a wider structure that allows experiences, views or concerns to reach the right people at the centre of the communities.
  • share learning with patients and practices. Feedback on outcomes and liaise with other practices
    regarding relevant issues within the South Bucks PCN.
  • help with fundraising. There are examples of PPGs helping practices with events that help with fund raising or support events (i.e. open days).
  • improve communication. The PPG can be used as a conduit for improving communication between
    patients, the practice and the role of commissioners.
  • help the practice deliver change. Where changes are required in the practice, either as a result of
    the local survey or some other initiative, the PPG can help staff communicate the idea to patients.
  • become a hub for social networking. The group could be more than something that just meet to
    discuss the practice.
  • promote education and self-help. If practices promote campaigns or self-help initiatives the PPG
    could help support it and improve take up. They could also help the practice understand what areas
    are of particular interest for patients or link in with other organisations who need volunteers (such as bereavement services). These can be recruited from the practice population.

What PPGs are not

PPGs are not a forum to discuss personal complaints but we do welcome constructive criticism and ideas. Personal complaints should be dealt with through complaints process.

We would like our patients to be involved in shaping and improving the services we offer. There are two possible levels of involvement:

Full participation– member of our PPG meeting group
Full participation involves attending PPG meetings and supporting the activities of the group.

Email survey participation – member of our virtual patient representation group
We are asking patients if they willing to provide their e-mail addresses if they are happy to be contacted by e-mail periodically to be part of surveys. The surveys will cover services available at the practice.  We aim to collect around a hundred patient opinions from as broad a spectrum as possible to get a representative sample. This includes all ages, ethnicities, variety of medical conditions and also those that only rarely use the surgery. We aim to keep surveys short and only send them out from time to time so it shouldn’t take too much of your time.

You can choose either level of involvement by completing one of the following forms.

Virtual Involvement

For virtual involvement you can

Complete and submit the online form:

Full Involvement

For full involvement you can

Complete and submit the online form:

Meetings usually take place over Microsoft Teams and we aim to meet 3-6 monthly.

Members

  • Practice Manager – Rebecca Ellison
  • GP Representative – Dr Ghodasara
  • PPG patient members

You can contact us In the following ways:

By post: Patient Participation Group at The Ivers Practice, High Street, Iver, Bucks, SL0 9NU

By email: [email protected]

We use feedback from patients to improve our service, including from the friends and family test and other patient surveys, see under

We share and discuss this information with our patient participation group and consider ways we can improve.  For practice changes see under

Local public consultations, surveys and engagement activities

A patient participation group can also influence wider consultations occurring in the local area which go beyond the practice. A collective opinion from a patient participation group can help influence local changes. You can also have your say individually.

Have your say on health services across Buckinghamshire

There is an explanation and links to how you can give your view on present health services and future plans on health across Buckinghamshire, see under

Skip to content