Have you, or someone you support, left hospital in the last 12 months? We want to hear about your experience, whether it was positive, negative or somewhere in between.

Who is this survey for?

We want to hear from people who left an NHS hospital in the last 12 months, and from carers, relatives or friends who supported them.

We are interested in understanding what worked well during discharge, as well as any difficulties people experienced. This could include:

  • Receiving clear information and support before leaving hospital
  • Feeling involved in decisions about discharge
  • Having the right care, equipment, medication or follow-up arrangements in place
  • Experiencing delays, communication problems or other difficulties
  • Any other aspect of the discharge process that affected your experience

Whether your discharge experience was straightforward, difficult, or a mixture of both, we'd like to hear about it.

What do we mean by leaving hospital? 

By leaving hospital, also called being discharged, we mean leaving the hospital ward where the patient was being treated. This could mean going home, going to a care home, moving to a community hospital bed, or somewhere else to recover. 

How long will the survey take?

The survey should take around 10 to 15 minutes.

Your feedback will help us understand what is working well and where improvements may be needed to ensure people leave hospital safely, with the information and support they need.

Before you start:

  • If you are answering about your own hospital stay, please answer based on your own experience.
  • If you are a carer, relative or friend answering about someone else, please answer based on the experience of the person who was leaving hospital wherever possible.
  • If you do not know the answer to a question, please select “Don’t know / can’t remember” rather than guessing.
  • If there has been more than one discharge in the last 12 months, please answer about the most recent one.

How will we use your data?

If you decide to answer this survey, Healthwatch staff will use your answers to better understand the experiences of people leaving hospital. We will store your answers securely. We will take out any information that could identify you (e.g. names, locations) before we publish the survey's findings. 

We will share anonymised responses from this survey with Healthwatch England to help them understand people's experiences of leaving hospital across England. This includes learning from examples of good practice as well as identifying challenges people face during discharge.

For more information about how we use your data, please see our privacy notice.