Patients continue to rate their inpatient hospital care at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust highly, according to the results of the latest national Care Quality Commission (CQC) inpatient experience survey.
The survey asked people to give their opinions about the care they received, including the quality of information and communication with staff, the amount of support given to help them eat and drink, and their discharge arrangements along with their overall experience.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals stood out for its consistently high scores in key areas such as:
- Kindness and compassion
- Respect and dignity
- Confidence and trust in doctors and nurses treating them
- Cleanliness of rooms and wards
- Being given enough information on their condition and treatment
- Pain management during treatment
The Trust's most improved scores also included:
- Discussing if any equipment or home adaptations were needed when leaving hospital
- Understanding advice about what they should do or should not do after discharge
- Getting help from staff to eat meals
- Not being prevented from sleeping at night
Hospital staff also received the thumbs up when considering individual language needs, such as translations, braille or interpreters, and was scored higher than the national average. Consideration of individual cultural, religious, accessibility and dietary needs was also rated highly.
'No weak links in the chain'
One patient who agrees with the survey's findings is recent inpatient Katie Lennox, 33, who suffered a seizure at work on 16th July and spent time on the neurosurgery wards following brain tumour surgery.
"All the staff have been great. I've been on a few wards, including the high dependency unit and everyone has been really informative of what the processes are, where I am with the care, and keeping me motivated and helping me to retain my dignity following invasive surgery."
Her partner Kane Nimmo also praised the support Katie has received: "The communication from staff has been really good and the support we've had from the nurses, particularly around handover details, has been extremely strong. There's not been a weak link in the chain as far as I've seen. It's hard sitting here feeling helpless when you know you can't do anything, but the staff have really put me at ease and encouraged me to help where I can with little things and normalised it in a way that I didn't think possible."
Positive feedback
Professor Chris Morley, Chief Nurse at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Our staff work tirelessly for our patients, so we are delighted to have once again performed highly in key areas such as kindness and compassion and dignity and respect. It is also particularly pleasing to see key improvements in discussions around adaptations and equipment that might be needed before leaving hospital as this can be vital in supporting many patients with their ongoing recovery at home. However, this feedback from our patients is an opportunity for continuous learning so we will now carefully review these results to see what further steps we can take to further improve our patients' experience."
