Each year, all acute and specialist NHS Trusts participate in a survey of adult inpatients. Although there is a time lag between when the survey is carried out and when we receive the results of the survey, ours have now been published.
Last year the survey was sent to 1250 patients discharged from a CRH or HRI inpatient ward in July 2016 and a response rate of 46.5% was achieved.
Patients were asked about their experience of:
- The Emergency /A&E department
- Waiting list and planned admissions
- Waiting to get a bed on a ward
- Doctors and nurses
- Care and treatment
- Operations and procedures
- Leaving hospital
Scores for each question are out of 10, a higher score is better. Trust scores of each question in the survey are also compared with the range of results from all other Trusts that took part. An analysis technique called the ‘expected range’ is used to determine whether a Trust performs ‘about the same’, ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than other trusts. This analysis is based on a rigorous statistical analysis and therefore any scores outside the expected range means it performs significantly better / worse than what would be expected and unlikely to have occurred by chance. Here's how we did:
CHFT were reported as scoring about the same for all but one of the questions. The Trust was reported as scoring better than the majority of other Trusts for the question:
- If you brought your own medication into hospital, were you able to take it when you needed to? Scoring 8.2
The Trust was also noted to have made a statistically significant increase since last year in the score for one of the questions:
- When you were first admitted to a bed on a ward, did you share a sleeping area, for example a room or bay, with patients of the opposite sex? Scoring 9.2
Other questions where the Trust has achieved an improved score include:
- Members of staff informing patients about any danger signals to watch out for after discharge
- Being told how to take medication in a way that could be understood
The Trust continued to score well in response to the following questions:
- Did you feel threatened during your stay in hospital by other patients or visitors?
- In your opinion, how clean was the hospital room or ward that you were in?
- Were you given enough privacy when being examined or treated?
The Trust score decreased for the following questions:
- Given written or printed information about what patients should or should not do after leaving hospital
- Being told how patients could expect to feel after the operation or procedure
- Being bothered by noise at night from other patients
The results will be further analysed by the Trust’s Health Informatics team, including a review of any comments supplied by patients. This will be reviewed by the Patient Experience and Caring Group who will be responsible for identifying any improvement work required.
The full set of results are available on the CQC website: http://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RWY/survey/3