Questions Asked by Healthcare Professionals

News - 01 November 2023

Healthwatch Wirral are often asked by members of the public why they are asked questions at an appointment that seem very personal and not relevant.

A lot of what you are asked is so services are delivered fairly and to meet your needs. This is called monitoring. What you tell them about yourself helps them to identify any disadvantage you may have. So you can have person centred care and they support & plan services with you to meet your needs.

Although you often put your personal details on forms, it is often only sections on race, sexual orientation etc. that are used for monitoring and they don’t identify you personally. There are strict laws (Data Protection Act 1998) to make sure that your information is protected and dealt with responsibly.

Equality monitoring also helps services to meet their statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010 by helping services to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, promote equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. In addition to this, it can help identify areas of services that can be enhanced and improved for certain groups of our community, who may be experiencing barriers or are underrepresented.

This short video has been produced to help explain a little more.