In March, the Patient Experience team at UHSussex, alongside My University Hospitals Sussex charity and Healthwatch, were proud to have been finalists at the UK Customer Service Awards 2025 awards ceremony.
We attended alongside a line up of trusted household names such as Waitrose, Octopus Energy and First Direct Bank, to celebrate the great work going on to improve customer experience across all sectors. For UHSussex, and the wider NHS, customer service is about the patient experience, and we strive to deliver the same high quality experience to our patients that our commercial counterparts do for their customers.
We were there for our work on our pioneering Welcome Standards programme which is delivering positive change across our main hospital and emergency department receptions as we have standardised what a good welcome to our hospitals looks like.
Nominated in the Best Customer Partnership award category we were delighted to be joined at the evening by our partners in this initiative: Healthwatch and My University Hospitals Sussex charity. Healthwatch Brighton & Hove and Healthwatch West Sussex have been instrumental in helping us to use patient feedback to develop the standards, and they also validate the standards through their mystery shop process. The programme itself has been generously supported by My University Hospitals Sussex charity.
Summing up what it meant to the teams involved in delivering the welcome standards to our patients, Maggie Davies, Chief Nurse, said: “We’re so proud to have been finalists. It’s a fantastic recognition and thank you to our teams for the dedication they have to providing an excellent patient experience. Thank you to the judges for recognising our pioneering Welcome Standards programme.”
