Letting NHS staff know you need support. A survey for people with a learning disability and carers.

Overview

NHS England would like to know what you think.

Sometimes people with a learning disability need support to help them use health services.

An example of a health service is the doctor’s surgery or a hospital.

If healthcare services know you need support they should be able to make reasonable adjustments.

Reasonable adjustments are things like extra time with your doctor, giving you easy read information or more support to understand.

Sometimes healthcare staff do not know when people with a learning disability need extra support.

This means people with a learning disability can miss out on getting the reasonable adjustments they need.

NHS England want to put a note on your health record to tell NHS staff that you need extra help or support.

The note on your record is called a flag.

The flag could tell NHS staff:

• About your disability and how it affects you
• What help and support you would need to use health services.
• What NHS staff can do to make things easy for you, for example give you longer appointments

This information would be seen by doctors and nurses in all health services you might use, for example in hospitals and at the doctor’s surgery.

They would find the information on your health record, on the computer.

They would use this information to make sure they give you the best care possible.

You would choose what information was on your record, and what information you did not want to share.

This has not been done yet. The NHS want to find out what you think.

An easy read version of this survey is available here.