During December 2019, NHS England will be inviting more than 100,000 cancer patients nationally to take part in a survey about their care. This will include people who had hospital based cancer treatment from April to June 2019.

This survey is run by NHS England every year. It is called the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey and gives patients three months to feedback their views.

Questions include those about how and when people’s cancer was diagnosed, how involved they felt in decisions about their care and treatment, how much information they were given and whether they were treated with dignity and respect. It also asks people about the level of support they felt they were given by various NHS services and by social services.

Insight from the feedback will help improve cancer services for everyone.

The NHS wants to encourage more people to respond to the survey, particularly those from black and minority ethnic communities who are currently under-represented in responses to surveys.

Local organisations and partners are also asked to promote the survey, which is supported by a poster campaign. In previous years when this has happened, the response rate from patients has slightly improvement.

How to get involved

A sample of cancer patients will receive a letter in December inviting them to give feedback about their experience of treatment, either by completing a paper questionnaire (returned in a freepost envelope) or an online form if they prefer.

Patients who receive an invite are encouraged to complete and return the survey before the 31 March 2020 deadline.

Not everyone who has had cancer treatment will be contacted with a questionnaire but there are other ways that cancer patients can feedback on their treatment. This includes taking part in other local or national surveys and through the Friends and Family Test, which is available to anyone, any time, across the NHS.

You can find out more about the survey and other ways of sharing experience of cancer services here.

The following posters can be used to promote the survey:

• A4 poster
• A3 poster

Next steps

Once the survey closes, the feedback and findings will be written up in a report which will be published by NHS England next summer.