Making this site

Samantha Keeling:

"The idea for the clinic information website came from working as a nurse, then as a health advisor in GU and noticing that people were often unaware of the services provided or of how to gain access to them. This was particularly evident in the attendance rates to our young women's clinic.

"I started looking at ways to improve access and attendance to the young women's clinic as part of my BSC in Professional Practice.

"I went out to local schools and linked in with some school health workers and the local health promotion team in the PCT. Anecdotal evidence found the web was a hugely underutilised source. Lots of the young women stated they would feel happier accessing information about the clinic this way rather than using costly a mobile to try and get through to the clinic or ringing from home.

"With this in mind, and with government sexual health papers finding knowledge about sexual health services to be poor amongst other professionals, it was decided to go about collecting funding for a website. With much haggling and negotiation this was done and the money raised enabled the site to give full clinic information along with a dedicated area to the young women's service.

"In addition to the basic clinic information I was also able to add frequently asked questions that related directly to our service and have information about sexually transmitted infections as well as contraception.

"The site caters to the needs of the patient and to other professionals wishing to refer or to gain knowledge about the service at Ealing GUM, with the aim of improving patients' experiences of the clinic and encouraging collaboration and partnership with other service providers through shared knowledge.

"Although I am no longer working for the trust I am happy to share my experience of setting up the site with any other healthcare professionals and can be contacted via the designers, Design Graphix: info@design-graphix.net"