Disability alerts and health passports give your healthcare providers information about you for your appointment.
Disability alerts
A disability alert adds information about your needs to your electronic patient file. It helps us make sure you can:
- access your appointment
- understand what is happening
- feel safe.
For more information or help with disability alerts:
My Health Passport
To save you repeating information to your doctor or health and disability services, use My Health Passport. It explains how you want them to communicate with you and help you.
My Health Passport — Health and Disability Commissioner
Communication graphic cards
NZSL video about communication graphic cards — Vimeo
These cards are for Deaf and hard of hearing people to use when accessing health services. They are to:
- help you communicate with other people
- make other people aware of different ways to communicate with you.
The cards are the same size as a bank card so that they fit in your wallet. You could also save the image to your phone and show it when you visit.
There are 3 cards that say 'Hello, I'm Deaf' and 3 cards that say 'Hello, I'm hard of hearing' and they have different messages:
- one outlining communication methods
- one asking people to use NZ Video Relay Services
- one asking people to us physical distancing so that face masks can be removed.
Hello, I'm Hard of Hearing card
Hello, I'm Deaf card
Both cards — postcard size
Both card – business card size
Co-production, user experience testing and research
Co-production involves finding patients who can attend a meeting or series of meetings with the Disability team and other staff to develop a new service or way of working. Sometimes we also ask patients to give us feedback through user experience testing. If you would like to be included in co-production or user experience testing, we would love to hear from you.
If you are a researcher with disability expertise, let us know. We like to work with researchers who are familiar with the rights-based approach to disability. We frequently recommend potential researchers to other departments across the region.
To contact us: