Enter and View report: Royal Sussex County Hospital July 2022
Healthwatch Enter and View visit to the Royal Sussex County
On 22 July 2022, two Healthwatch volunteers took part in an Enter and View visit of Solomon Ward, which supports stroke patients. They also undertook a food tasting on the Renal Unit. They talked with 3 patients across both units and asked for their views of the ward environments, food service and discharge arrangements. They were supported during their visit by the Clinical Director of Facilities and Estates.
You can read our report which is available at the end of this page.
In summary:
(a) Solomon Ward - the physical environment
Our volunteers identified a number of positive findings during their visit:
- good staff/patient engagement
- good hygiene standards
- a calm ward environment overall
- some patient information being made available.
They also made some suggested improvements:
- tending to basic repairs such as holes in walls
- painting the unit a lighter colour
- adding pictures
- improving patient information.
(b) Renal unit - food tasting
Our volunteers awarded top marks to all the food they sampled - this is the same food that patients were offered.
"The food was hot when it reached the patient and was well presented on the plate. All of the 3 meals that were tasted were good and we enjoyed them."
But our volunteers raised concerns about a lack of engagement between clinical staff and patients on the Renal Unit. We are aware that on some wards medical staff are fully involved in mealtimes, whereas on others – such as on the Renal Unit – they are not, and this lack of consistency is something that Healthwatch will be raising with the trust.
Patient feedback was positive overall but highlighted areas to improve on
"... the ward is very busy and quite noisy at night which makes it difficult to sleep. The food is fine with plenty of choice. The care received has been amazing even though the staff are really busy but they always have time to listen. Discharge hasn't been discussed with me."
The benefits of our visits - and our thanks to staff
Our Enter and View visits are an excellent way for the trust to receive feedback from a patients' perspective on the physical environment of their hospital wards. Many of our findings and recommendations can be easily implemented bringing benefit to hundreds of future patients and staff. Our local trust has actively welcomed and supported these visits and we are grateful to them and everyone involved for their collaboration.
What has changed?
Healthwatch discussed our findings with the Trust at their Patient Experience and Engagement Group in September where our findings were described as being "very powerful". An update was given in November.
The Trust advised:
The Trust advised: our volunteers had noted that some doors marked ‘Keep closed’ were left open this will be escalated across the Trust to remind all staff of the need to ensure that safety doors are closed at all times.
The Trust recognises that good nutrition is part of a patient’s overall care package but staff are not always fully involved in mealtimes.
The Trust has used our feedback to support patient mealtimes by:
- Engaging directly with clinicians on wards where this was an issue
- Liaising with dietitians and Health Care staff to hone their skills
- Discussing this with senior nurses who took our findings back to their wards to discuss with their teams
- Exploring how aligning visiting times with meal times so that patients can be supported by their loved ones and utilising volunteers to help
This demonstrates the impact of our visits to the Trust and their willingness to work with us and use our findings to continually improve the patient experience.
Our volunteers also said that areas of Solomon ward looked unloved and we were told that the Trust is looking to decorate areas of the ward (which will move to the new 3Ts in Spring next year).
So, some excellent outcomes from our Enter & View – thank you Sue and Sylvia! We’ll be doing more visits later this year.
What is Enter and View?
Part of the local Healthwatch programme is to carry out Enter and View visits. Local Healthwatch representatives carry out these visits to health and social care services to find out how they are being run and make recommendations where there are areas for improvement.
The Health and Social Care Act allows local Healthwatch authorised representatives to observe service delivery and talk to service users, their families and carers on premises such as hospitals, residential homes, GP practices, dental surgeries, optometrists and pharmacies. Enter and View visits can happen if people tell us there is a problem with a service but, equally, they can occur when services have a good reputation so we can learn about and share examples of what they do well.
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove has worked in partnership with our local hospital trust for several years to conduct regular Enter and View visits. We call these visits to wards and other units 'Environmental Care Audits'. The visits are an extension of a national programme of audits called PLACE – Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment which involve local people (known as patient assessors) going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, assessing such things as privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance and, more recently, the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia or with a disability. Healthwatch will be supporting out trust to undertake their PLACE assessment later this year.
Links to some of our earlier reports are below.
Downloads
