A national survey has shown that Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SASH), which runs East Surrey Hospital, has improved the experience of patients at night time.
The national Care Quality Commission (CQC) inpatient survey takes place every year across England and involves asking patients who stayed in hospital a range of questions about their care and experience. In comparison with last year’s survey, significant improvements were scored when patients were asked whether they were bothered by noise at night.
This follows a range of actions put in place by the trust in response to previous feedback. Soft-close bins have been installed, the volume on telephones and brightness on screens has been reduced, patients are offered ear plugs and night masks and more clinical tests and procedures have been moved to day-time hours when possible.
Jane Dickson, chief nurse at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “We are pleased that the experience for patients at night has improved, but we know there is more we can do to make their stay even better. We are very grateful for our patients taking the time to feedback as it gives us a real opportunity to make practical improvements. We will be reviewing the latest findings to see what additional actions in response to this particular survey we need to take.”
544 patients who had stayed at SASH during July 2018 responded to the survey. Despite the CQC identifying a declining performance in a number of areas nationally, SASH’s overall experience score remained the same as last year’s. The Trust’s results improved significantly in four questions, including patients’ perception of the length of time they were waiting for admission, the number of times their admission date was changed and their experience of staff giving conflicting information. The immediate priorities for improvement based on the feedback are patients being offered a choice of food and people seeing information about how to complain about their care. The results will now be analysed and plans for improvement plans drawn up.
The full results for SASH are available on the CQC website.
